5G can be used in the private sector, primarily to open up innovation opportunities to businesses.
Fifth-generation mobile network, best known as 5G, is starting in the latest trend to rapidly spread in the business enterprise world. 5G has been all over the media since its very early days and is best known as the new fast global cellular network that pretty much everyone will use on phones. It promised and delivered higher data speeds, low latency (faster response times) and more than we ever got before from mobile networks.
What is less known and explored is that 5G can be used in the private sector as well, primarily to open up innovation opportunities to businesses. One such private 5G network is being explored and experimented on in the Corporate Experience Center (CXC) at the PTC headquarters in Boston. CXC even offers a virtual tour for interested parties. It is an interesting high technology experience, even if little dizzy, showing of the future office.
KPGM and PTC announced a strategic alliance in 2020, becoming a PTC Global System Integrator and combining their expertise to bring benefits of private 5G networks to customers. This alliance is very potent as KPGM is offering great reach by operating in 146 countries all over the world while PTC has years of field experience and much-needed software products to make it all work. Primary customers for this alliance are enterprises and businesses, but the public sector and institutions, such as hospitals and universities, can benefit as well.
When the first mobile phone was presented by a Motorola engineer in 1973, almost a hundred years after the first wireless telephone conversation was performed in 1880 by Graham Bell, it was apparent that wireless was a technology of the future. It was a long wait for wireless devices to advance. Meanwhile, everyone relied on wired connection as wireless lacked range, bandwidth and reliability. At the end of 1996, Nokia commercially offered Nokia 9000 Communicator to the public, the first mobile phone with real internet access.
From that point, these devices conquered the hearts and minds of people. In 2002, cellular phones were having their cameras integrated and a popular 3G mobile network standard was being adopted worldwide. The year 2007 brought the first iPhone. In 2008, the first Android phone was released, and the rest is history. Still, all these years later, for serious business and even competition events, such as pro-gaming, individuals and businesses always preferred using wired connections.
Now in 2021, we are finally on the brink of super-fast communication with the latest 5G mobile networks, able to connect any modern gadget to networks reliably and quickly. This has opened up tremendous opportunities and creating new trends with businesses competing to adopt 5G in private networks to outmatch the competition.
What Is 5G Exactly?
5G is the newest generation of global wireless standards designed to connect all kinds of electronic devices worldwide. These devices include phones, laptops, TVs, tablets and nowadays with IoT (Internet of Things), any other modern gadgets with wireless connectivity, including kitchen fridges. Prior standards include 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G, with 3G and 4G still being used all over the world. While 5G has had a share of its difficulties to overtake the world, including lots of political and disinformation campaigns, technology inevitably prevails in the end. The loudest concerns were about potential health hazards, but from the scientific point of view, there are not any serious issues with 5G networks. Maybe the only noticeable health critique on 5G’s behalf is that there seems to be a lack of long-term studies to 5G exposure. The video All you need to know to understand 5G explains the concerns about 5G technology from a scientific point of view.
There are two distinct advantages that 5G brings over earlier networks, such as 4G: higher data speeds and very low latency. Both are of crucial importance in the current information era. HD videos and cameras with large resolutions are being used, which will only keep increasing, and there is a growing demand for more data and faster processing than ever. Even a simple total count of devices connected to networks is a serious requirement to handle. Standard home wireless routers sometimes clog and startle with as little as 10 connected devices, something easily reached with few phones, TVs and laptops in a home. 5G improves on all these aspects and subsequently allows for creating more complex and faster systems to network than ever.
Private 5G Networks
Private networks, compared to public 5G, offer potential customers their own tailored cellular network with several attractive advantages. First, in many use-cases, data bandwidth is massive and can satisfy all needs of a business. Furthermore, private networks can be configured for particular needs, such as improved security, and they are more agile and practical for eventual modifications and changes. There is a set of key requirements of private 5G networks that sums up benefits. These are availability, reliability, security, quality of service and interworking.
Availability indicates that these networks are always operational, 24/7. They must be reliable and robust to transmit data. Quality of service (QoS) covers that there are ways to control throughput, jitter and packet drop rate. Security is self-explanatory and of great importance to enterprise business. Interlocking describes the capability of different 5G networks to communicate among themselves. This is a great starting set for enterprises, especially if it can be seamlessly integrated into the corporate or manufacturing environment by expert teams like KPGM and PTC.
Naturally, there are also a couple of downsides to new technology. Most notably, the setup procedure is complex and costly with prices ranging between a quarter to a couple of million dollars. Cost depends on the scale of the network, but it is expected to drop over time as technology gets adapted more. Other downsides that are slowing public networks are that connected devices need to support 5G technology, and there are some coverage and range issues with 5G technology. Still, this does not seem to slow adaptation too much in the enterprise sector as there are currently over 1,000 5G networks operational worldwide.
Software Support
All this expensive hardware would go to waste if there was no supporting software that can use hardware resources properly. Exploiting 5G capabilities is no trivial task, and it will take some time for companies to catch up and develop proper software. Here is also where KPMG and PTC hope to profit as they are offering their strategic vision and professional services, including several proven and field-tests PTC’s solution. These include ThingWorx Industrial IoT Solution Platform, Augmented Reality (AR) Platform and Windchill Product Lifecycle Management Software.
For example, ThingWorx Industrial IoT Solution Platform is a solution that helps users easily connect different disparate devices to a single platform and collect data from multiple data sources. The platform then offers prebuilt tools and applications to manage data and build dashboards, workspaces and mobile interfaces to analyze data and reap the business benefits. These tools cover processes such as asset monitoring, tracking performance, work utilization and more. In large corporations, these are very complex and cumbersome tasks.
This is where new technology brings in lots of potential for improvement. Potential use-cases of 5G and supporting software seem to be abundant. It is natural to expect the increasing growth of 5G private networks globally. If anything, the focus on wireless communication and software development will be higher than ever before.
5G Is Here to Stay for a Decade
According to GSM Association’s future projections, 5G will likely cover one-third of the world’s population by the year 2025, with more than billions of connections active. The amount of internet data and connectivity in the world is also rapidly increasing, potentially doubling every 18 months. Changes like these will increase demand for faster adaptation of 5G technology and, eventually, more improvements.
Regarding improvements, recent news broke that there are already plans and expert groups formed to define the 6G standard, but that is likely not coming before the year 2030. 5G is here to stay at least for the next decade. If you wonder about 7G, apparently it is already being considered in research circles.
