Rendever Blog

The Promised World Of 5G Connectivity

Rendever was recently mentioned on Forbes by the Forbes Technology Council, as one of the many promising ventures that will become super powered by 5G connectivity. Read below, or read the original article here.


The Promised World Of 5G Connectivity

This year (2018) has already been full of memorable sports moments — from Lindsey Vonn’s last Olympic race to Patrick Reed winning his first major at the Masters.

But when I think of what really steals the show for me, it is the technology that makes viewing these events possible. Think about it: We were able to view livestreamed 4k video from cameras attached to bobsleds and pause and switch angles of figure skating routines. A small group of lucky football fans got to watch the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles through virtual reality goggles, and high-tech sensorsprotected ski races from predators — using lasers, gasses and tiger roars to ward off dangerous wild boars.

The next-generation wireless standard, 5G, is at the heart of these new technological innovations, providing the architecture required to enable these high-bandwidth, low-latency applications. And 5G was not hiding in the background. Peppered throughout coverage of the Olympic Games, we could hear broadcasters discussing 5G as if the wireless network was a Hollywood celebrity stationed in the stands to promote their latest prime-time television show.

And, in a sense, 5G was there to promote something — the promised world of 5G connectivity.

If nothing else, these events showed us that we are only now scratching the surface of what 5G can really do. The possibilities are endless, and the impact will be significant to all of us. It is more than just faster download speeds; 5G extends into mmWave frequencies, allowing for the high resolution and pinpoint accuracy that enables the type of wide scale and precise interconnectivity required for connected cities, factories and high-density events. Every item, from our refrigerators to our sneakers, will be connected to the cloud via a 5G network that can interact with millions of other devices, informing every decision we make — and, in some cases, making those decisions for us.

Everything from entertainment and sports to medicine, manufacturing, transportation, construction and education will be affected by 5G. At some point (maybe sooner than we think), we will be able to stream live 4K video on our phones while walking down the street, dodging self-driving cars as we perform remote appendectomies on patients halfway around the world.

And that is just what we can imagine. Imagine what we can’t imagine. Who knew that 3G would lead to an explosion of data? And who would have thought that 4G would enable the gig economy or lead to interactive augmented reality games such as Ingress and Pokémon Go or Rendever’s virtual reality for senior citizens to enable them to go where they want without actually going? The possibilities for 5G are endless.

And we, the technology industry, are the ones who need to get us there. We have a responsibility to facilitate an environment where developers, service providers and manufacturers can create truly transformative experiences that can live up to the promise of 5G. We need to start with a robust standards process (already underway) and follow that with rigorous testing in realistic conditions — both in the lab and in the field. As the stakes move from delivering uninterrupted live video of a ski race to ensuring autonomous vehicles can detect and avoid road hazards or pedestrians, we need to verify that 5G is reliable and secure if we are to trust it with our lives.

By nearly every measurement, the 5G demonstrations we have seen this year have been successes, demonstrating that 5G can work for particular applications on a large scale. Later this year, two large U.S.-based service providers are expected to roll out fixed wireless services in a select few test cities. This will result in 5G-enabled mobile devices early next year, followed by early-stage immersive experiences. This 5G connectivity will allow the innovators of the world to change how we live, work and play.

I, for one, am looking forward to the possibilities and to experiencing the reality.

Ron Nersesian is president and chief executive officer of Keysight Technologies.

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