Which businesses can benefit from 5G in the UK?
With the Chancellor of the Exchequer committing over £1 billion in rolling out 5G as well as other fibre networks across the UK through to 2023, businesses all over the country are exploring the potential of the exciting new technology.
To the general public that’s simply used to using 4G to access the internet on their mobile phones, 5G may not be an overly exciting prospect. But to businesses in the know, the faster speed, greater capacity, lower latency, and incredible reliability will unlock tremendous opportunities to become bigger and better.
With the first 5G networks predicted to arrive in the UK as soon as 2020, a huge realm of thus far hindered technologies will be unlocked and others fast-adapting businesses will be able to enhance their business practices. To showcase the incredible range of possibilities that 5G could bring with it, these are three industries which could see their businesses take huge leaps forward with 5G at their disposal.
Transportation: Adopting self-driving vehicles
Deployment of 5G is expected to give rise to a new age in the transportation industry as the incredibly low latency that it offers will enable self-driving vehicles as well as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure. The emergence of these technologies is happening much quicker than many predicted, and given the rate at which automotive companies are enhancing the driver assistance in vehicles, if the 5G infrastructure is in place, they will soon be able to advance into the realm of autonomous driving. The key is the extremely low latency, which is expected to cut from 40 to 50 milliseconds on 4G to less than one millisecond, as any amount of latency would increase the risk of an accident.
Mobile gaming: Bigger, better, and streamed games
The mobile gaming industry is huge and nearly makes up half of the total global revenues of the gaming industry. However, the standard of mobile games in the App Store and Play Store are of very low quality when compared to console and PC video games. Other gaming businesses, such as those in the iGaming industry, have already been able to move the majority of their games to the mobile space, from the seemingly heavy live casino games to the £10 free no deposit casino bonuses, but 5G would still be able to enhance the offering with increased speeds. As shown by the Google Stadia, mobile phones can handle triple-A-quality console games, and 5G will allow anyone with a device that can already connect to YouTube to be able to seamlessly stream in the best games around, vastly growing their potential audience.
Altered realities: AR and VR to have many more applications
Augmented reality and virtual reality technologies have mostly been utilised in the gaming industry so far, with AR enhancing games and VR offering the most immersive gaming experiences. With the power of 5G, the altered realities can spread their reach to many different industries, including retail, property, tourism, and manufacturing, with cloud-connected experiences becoming commonplace. AR technology can offer more ways for people to gather and view information while VR technology will offer new, hands-on ways to learn and practice techniques.
From self-driving car manufacturers in the transport industry to game developers to almost every business that employs a stage of training, 5G is set to revolutionise the way that a huge range of businesses operate.
