5 Reasons Why 5G Is Essential in America
This innovative technology is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, in cities across this country. Those municipalities slowing down change are at risk of being stuck in the past.
Last fall, The Wall Street Journal published a story illuminating the challenges of implementing 5G access in towns and cities across the country. The conflict, and often tug of war, is between local jurisdictions and the four major carriers that are helping to build the needed infrastructure.
Change is always hard, and the 5G innovation presents some unique challenges. But we at the Purdue College of Engineering have been leading the charge on 5G development and understand the many ways this technology will help to fuel our collective future. With that in mind, here are five reasons why local communities and residents should get behind this technology now.
1. You’ll put your community at a disadvantage if you fight 5G.
Local governments now resisting 5G are doing so at their own peril. If a neighborhood wants no fiber, no wireless — even no electricity — perhaps they have the right to stay in the dark. I’d urge another path though: Update your regulations and do backflips, if you must, to welcome this innovation into your neighborhoods. You will set yourself back years, or even decades, if you don’t adapt and facilitate this change. If an up-and-coming company is considering opening a business in your town, and a competitive community has 5G, you will lose. Your resistance today will put you at a significant economic disadvantage tomorrow. Forgoing 5G in 2018 is the equivalent of writing off the Internet in the late ‘90s.
2. You need the small cells, and yes, that means more of them.
Small cells in 5G are essential to innovation and quite different than what is required for 3G or 4G, where one large cell tower would suffice. Why does 5G require so many new towers? The densification of cells is necessary so that technology can accelerate to even higher speeds. A small radius of coverage and lower power requirement — or the 5G infrastructure — means that the radio wave distribution, or propagation, is also safer. A 5G world is necessary for many reasons, among them our voracious data usage and the exponential advances in our technology. In fact, the next time your smartphone video crawls to a stop or that important phone call gets dropped at the most inopportune time, think about a world with 5G, where those problems will quickly fade to black.
3. 5G will be the foundation for the next wave of technology.
Autonomous vehicles. Augmented reality and virtual reality. Artificial intelligence. What do these technologies have in common? All of them will have important roles in our changing world, though the precise applications and practical uses, in many cases, are stories yet to be written. But another thing they all have in common is their reliance on 5G. These types of new services have great benefits for individuals and create value for society. We want them and need them. And they need 5G.
4. The 5G installations will create a universal infrastructure.
The world of 3G and 4G meant a patchwork infrastructure in which the myriad providers had to invest in, and create, their own infrastructure to serve customers. 5G will change that. The propagation of small cells will allow multiple providers to share one common physical infrastructure. At a local level, this means that doing the hard work now — i.e., allowing carriers to install 5G towers — will ultimately ease the infrastructure needs down the road.
5. The future of mobile phones is a 5G future.
Would you dare swap your smartphone for, say, a rotary phone from the 1970s? I didn’t think so. But a community without 5G capabilities will be stuck in the past. The new frontiers of mobile services are both in the spectrum of new “millimeter wave” 24–28GHz band. What that really means is that you’ll need 5G to take full advantage of the next generation of mobile phone technology. Indianapolis is the only city in the U.S. with both AT&T and Verizon’s 5G rollout. Smart planning made that happen. Other communities would be wise to follow suit. After all, do you really want to be the place known for dropped calls, spotty service and a stubborn affection for the status quo? I wouldn’t either.
