At the advent of the 21st century, little did we know that within the first two decades, our everyday life is going to be drastically transformed with technology. Almost every thinkable aspect of life, including but not limited to communication, transport, entertainment, health, etc. are in the middle of significant evolution. And the major catalyst of change is the super-fast, ultra-low latency 5G network. In this article, we take the journey into the near-future and discover the ways 5G will transform our everyday life.
- Downloading and Streaming Services: Speed is the trademark feature of 5G technology, and it is a well-justified one. With downloading speed soaring past 1 Gbps on a 5G network, waiting tirelessly for a giant file is going to be a thing of the past. Imagine downloading a full 4K resolution movie in a matter of few seconds. This is a 20-fold improvement over 4G LTE network.
We have seen the recent popularity of streaming services like Netflix, Hotstar, Amazon Video, etc. With tremendous bandwidth capacity, the quality of content is only going to improve. Additionally, 5G technology will make terms like ‘buffering’, ‘lag’ or ‘delay’ go extinct. - Online Gaming: It’s not the speed of the network, but the latency that plays a major role in an online or multiplayer game. Latency is the time (measured in milliseconds or ms) it takes for a piece of information to reach from point A to point B. On a 5G network, latency can be as low as 10 ms in the average case, which comes further down to 1 ms in best case.
A participant in an online multiplayer event with thousands of dollars at stake can better understand the importance of low latency. - Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality: With the help of a smartphone camera, technology that adds digital elements to the real world is known as Augmented reality. On the other hand, the technology that takes one completely out of the physical world into a virtual world is called Virtual Reality. Mixed reality is the immersive experience that results by combining both augmented reality and virtual reality.
Sure, AR/VR/MR are not commonplace today. That is exactly high-speed and ultra-low latency 5G network is expected to achieve – to bring AR/VR/MR to the mainstream market for the general public. Not only this will incredibly transform the way we interact with the world, it will assist in our work by boosting our productivity. Imagine attending a round-table conference with your colleagues from the comfort of your living room. Or roaming the shopping mall in California while physically being in India. - Autonomous Vehicles: Much like in Gaming, latency or the speed of response is of paramount importance in self-driving vehicles. As we can imagine, the delay in response from the system would lead to an accident. In the worst case, it could result in loss of lives.
The dream of autonomous vehicles is not recent. It has been there for a decade, waiting for a true backbone network to rely upon. With high data transmission rates and dead-low latency, this dream is finally moving towards realization with 5G technology.
Autonomous vehicles becoming a norm will not only free the passenger from the burden of driving to focus more on productivity or leisure, it will prove beneficial to the whole society with better management of traffic and pollution. - Telemedicine and Telesurgery: At the time of writing this article, every country on this planet has come to a standstill due to Coronavirus (COVID-19). People are terrified by stepping their foot outside their homes. But what if a medical emergency arises amidst this chaos? There is no better time to understand the importance of telemedicine and telesurgery than now.
5G technology can make remote consultations and checkups possible. With the help of HD calls, doctors can check the patient and diagnose the problem. That way, most of the health issues can be addressed, if not all.
Telesurgery, on the other hand, is performing live surgical operation on a patient with the help of robotic technology and ultra-fast network like 5G, while the surgeon and patient being geographically apart. It’s soon going to become the new norm. A surgeon in China has successfully removed a part of a pig’s liver in an astounding feat of telesurgery with the help of 5G technology.
Conclusion:
As remarkable as these changes sound, our everyday life is soon going to be transformed with 5G technology. Sure, many of these changes are not yet apparent to us. That is because the technology is improving day by day. There are few technical hiccups to overcome before introducing it to the public.
In all certainty, 5G technology is the first true network that can make these transformations happen to our daily lives.
Here is the infographic which summarises the article in a picture format.
