What is 5G and Why Should Your Business Care?
Your employees are likely using 4G to connect their mobiles, but with the improvements that 5G networks are predicted to make, your business might be looking at upgrading your service in less than five years’ time.
Why Should Your Business Care about 5G?
Faster Data Speeds Creates More Productive Employees
Networks are predicting that mobiles on 5G will be able to send data with less than a millisecond delay, which is around 7x faster than the quickest 4G connection can currently provide. Not only that, but 5G also has faster download speeds than 4G as well, boasting up to 10gbps (that’s about 1.25GB) downloaded per second (that’s about 1000x the speed of 4G).
How do these speeds translate into your average day-to-day mobile use? Well, with 5G, you’ll be able to download an entire HD film to your phone in under a second.
Speeds like this could significantly boost your business’s productivity levels; cutting out any waiting times and making employees work more efficiently. Imagine your employees being able to download entire projects to their phone in a blink of an eye, or stream HD video without any buffering.
Additionally, any of your business’s mobile based solutions (such as mobile tracking and management), will also work far more effectively on 5G, as the higher download speeds will enable you to receive important information (such as locational and device updates) even faster.
5G Could Make Business Mobile a Future-Proof Solution
At the moment, network providers are finding it difficult to manage the increasing number of mobile users attempting to connect through 4G.
Traditional mobile connections are made through radio waves, but the telecommunications industry are currently searching for alternatives, in order to cope with the increasing demand. The technology behind 5G networks looks to potentially solve this issue however, by enabling mobiles to connect over another set of waves called millimetre waves.
By relieving the current strain on radio waves, 5G broadband could turn your business mobiles into a future-proof solution, capable of handling any number of new employees you may need it to support, without slowing down the network. In fact, 5G could even be the very last generation of mobile broadband, meaning that rather than having to invest in new technology to support each new generation, 5G will simply upgrade as and when it needs to.
Fewer Disruptions and Cleaner Calls Enables Better Customer Service
Whilst using millimetre waves to connect devices has many advantages, these waves also find passing through solid structures a lot harder than radio waves do. This disadvantage could lead to an increase in dropped calls and signal interferences, but networks are discovering new ways to bypass these limitations.
By using miniature signal stations called small cells, network providers could ensure that millimetre waves can reach mobile users in even the most congested city areas. This means that by running your business mobiles on a 5G network, you and your employees could enjoy all the benefits of 5G (faster data downloads and connections), without the threat of dropped calls and poor signal.
What’s more, that 5G also promises to significantly improve mobile call quality as well. As of now, mobile connections cannot handle more than one person speaking at the same time, if they do, the signal will briefly cut off. Whereas mobiles connecting over 5G will be unaffected by this limitation, thanks to a technology called Full Duplex. With 5G, your employees will be able to hold cleaner calls, thereby providing clientele with a higher quality service, and making your company a better business to talk to.
New technology and the 5G Release Date
Aside from these benefits, 5G also promises to lower latency rates, which essentially means that you’ll be able to maintain a smoother broadband connection on your mobile. This will enable you to do things with your mobile like streaming a HD video conference from any location, or even supporting future VR applications. There’s even a suggestion that 5G will be able to support self-driving cars in the near-future, which is something that we’ve been trying to reach for a while.
For the moment, industry experts are predicting that 5G networks will be ready for the commercial market by 2020, with business focused apps rolling out for around 2022/3. Aside from having to develop the new technology required for 5G, networks are also having to navigate the legal minefield of Ofcom and European telecoms legislation, so the wait is understandable.
5G might not be here for a while yet, but it promises to change the mobile industry for the better.
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