The proposed vision for 5G technology is revolutionary, and its architecture truly innovative. It offers features that enhance not only network performance, but also the way networks are built and deployed. This is an essential aspect because one of the drivers for 5G is the reduction in both CAPEX and OPEX, which will open the door for more players offering more innovative business models.
Today, an alliance is being forged between 5G and artificial intelligence (AI) that together will be pillars of the digital transformation of millions of businesses around the globe. 5G’s technological proposition is aimed at closing the cycle on the network convergence between fixed and mobile. This means that 5G architectures and technology will allow the migration of all the services that are today dependent of fixed connections (namely fibre) to mobile (ubiquitous) connectivity, enhancing the existing portability to become true mobility of services. Read More
Tag Archives: 5G
If DARPA Has Its Way, AI Will Rule the Wireless Spectrum
In the early 2000s, Bluetooth almost met an untimely end. The first Bluetooth devices struggled to avoid interfering with Wi-Fi routers, a higher-powered, more-established cohort on the radio spectrum, with which Bluetooth devices shared frequencies. Bluetooth engineers eventually modified their standard—and saved their wireless tech from early extinction—by developing frequency-hopping techniques for Bluetooth devices, which shifted operation to unoccupied bands upon detecting Wi-Fi signals.
Frequency hopping is just one way to avoid interference, a problem that has plagued radio since its beginning. Long ago, regulators learned to manage spectrum so that in the emerging wireless ecosystem, different radio users were allocated different frequencies for their exclusive use. While this practice avoids the challenges of detecting transmissions and shifting frequencies on the fly, it makes very inefficient use of spectrum, as portions lay fallow. Read More
Inside the Controversial Company Helping China Control the Future of the Internet
Dennis Honrud’s family has been farming wheat in eastern Montana for three generations. Unashamedly old school, Honrud sows only half his 6,000 acres, leaving the rest fallow to avoid soil depletion. “There’s not many of us left,” he laments. Like many workers in the global economy, the 68-year-old needs to stay connected, in his case to monitor crop prices and weather updates from his green John Deere tractor. So he asked a telecom provider to put a cell tower in his backyard.
The Honrud property in Glasgow, Mont., is so remote that it wasn’t well covered by any of the big four American carriers–Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. So Honrud turned to the local provider, Nemont Wireless, to install the tower. Today, cell service is pretty good. When the occasional car accident happens on the stretch of highway next to the Honrud farm, highway patrol officers no longer need to drive a mile to get a signal. Now they can place a call from the scene. If that hasn’t saved a life yet, “at some point in time it will,” Honrud says.
But there’s a problem. Like around a quarter of the smaller “tier 3” carriers catering to rural areas like Glasgow, Nemont uses equipment provided by Huawei, the world’s biggest telecommunications-equipment company. The Chinese firm generated a mind-boggling $107 billion in revenue last year, selling equipment to customers in 170 countries and regions around the world. It also may be the most controversial company in the world. Read More
The Terrifying Potential of the 5G Network
Two words explain the difference between our current wireless networks and 5G: speed and latency. 5G—if you believe the hype—is expected to be up to a hundred times faster. (A two-hour movie could be downloaded in less than four seconds.) That speed will reduce, and possibly eliminate, the delay—the latency—between instructing a computer to perform a command and its execution. This, again, if you believe the hype, will lead to a whole new Internet of Things, where everything from toasters to dog collars to dialysis pumps to running shoes will be connected. Remote robotic surgery will be routine, the military will develop hypersonic weapons, and autonomous vehicles will cruise safely along smart highways. The claims are extravagant, and the stakes are high. One estimate projects that 5G will pump twelve trillion dollars into the global economy by 2035, and add twenty-two million new jobs in the United States alone. This 5G world, we are told, will usher in a fourth industrial revolution. ReadMore
The convergence of 5G and AI: A venture capitalist’s view
As an emerging-technology investor, I am always on the lookout for new technologies that can improve existing markets and enable new ones.
That’s why 5G really intrigues me. This advanced digital cellular network protocol opens up new frequency spectrum, bringing with it much higher throughput and latency performance. This positions 5G as a potentially game-changing technology and investment opportunity that could fuel a new generation of applications and solve some of the world’s biggest problems.
5G is not just “4G but better.” It taps new spectrum that will drive innovative business opportunities and use cases. For example, in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands, a.k.a. the “millimeter wave band,” reams of new bandwidth could transform the communications carrier landscape as we know it while further improving the end-user experience of mobility. Read More
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