With an eye set on the future, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg announced at CES 2015 the development of the 5G network. It won’t be around for some time, but still how will it be any better than the present day 4G?
Vestberg’s view on 5G is not only that of improved speed, but of increased versatility and intelligent interaction with the human counterpart. In this line of thinking, the idea of having every object connected to the Internet and interacting with each other is not that far fetched… hell yeah, it might be closer than you think.
Ericsson is considered by some the world’s leading sales-company in the telecom gear area, and Vestberg’s view of a connected society has been in place for many years; he states: “We are seeing the biggest transformation ahead of us!” Even though the 5G tech is far from being ready for usage, with a reported release date somewhere in 2020, Vestberg states that the project is in the works and progressing.
Ericsson CEO in an interview made it clear that 5G will not be only about speed, but it will go as far as creating service-aware networks, or even networks that are autonomous and intelligent enough to comprehend the situation and the context that surround a connected gadget. He offered a simple example, of a passenger sitting in an autonomous car. In such a situation 5G should be intelligent enough to know that the person sitting in the car will need a high-speed connection for their handset, while the car itself will require a connection with low-latency, for a speedy response time. It might also be the case that the 5G network will detect when a device is running low on energy and will diminish the number of pings on the radio in order to save up power.
It is estimated that by 2020, almost 85 % of the world will benefit at least from 3G connections, while 60 % will already be using 4G. A number of examples of connected 5G devices were shown at the Ericsson booth. They teamed up with a Swedish sports-gear producer named Poc to design a connected bike helmet. As such, cars connected to the network will automatically notice the bike and will answer by hitting the brakes in order to avoid impact.
Guess this is the way things are going. Once all the connections are up and running we will see the difference, hopefully sometime sooner. Until then, stay safe, drive carefully and be aware of your surroundings.