5G for business – a world of opportunity or just another generation?

Rob Pocock at Red Helix describes the transformative business potential that 5G will bring – but cautions that we will not see massive change overnight

I remember 20 years ago the excitement of showing a colleague how I could access the internet on a mobile phone, before shortly realising…how slow it was, how expensive it was, and how it was in fact - not very useful.

Three years later, 3G access arrived – a reasonably fast and reliable way of transferring data via a mobile device. But today, when a signal drops to 3G you can guarantee an audible moan from the user.

Fast forward to 5G, and we find ourselves wondering if it’s going to be the generation of tech that changes the world.

Spend five minutes searching on the web and you will conclude that 5G is all about speed. But 5G, in its true “stand-alone” mode, is much more than that. Standalone 5G brings faster, more reliable, and vastly more capable telecommunications than ever before.

With Standalone 5G, it no longer relies on 4G and instead all infrastructure including base stations, core networks and backhaul links are dedicated exclusively to 5G. It has to be, because it is both expensive for carriers to provide a public 5G network and for businesses to build their own private 5G infrastructure if they need one.

Benefits of 5G

Businesses need to innovate and find new and value-generating ways of utilising 5G technology. And 5G has the potential for this, not just because of the increase in speed, but because of a number of other benefits.

Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC)

As we start to see use cases that require near real-time transfer of data, such as autonomous cars, having a service with less latency becomes very important.

With the latency of around 20-30 milliseconds, a 4G network was largely unusable for such applications. But with 5G, latency is well below 10 milliseconds, and best case around 1 millisecond. With this very low latency a whole new market opens.

Massive Machine-Type Communication (mMTC)

Increasingly, networks have to connect to numerous devices. A simple example of 4G limitation can be seen in heavily crowded spaces: you have five bars of signal but are still unable to use an app. However, with 5G using the millimeter wave spectrum, many more devices can be connected in the same geographic area compared with 4G.

Public or private?

For businesses to benefit, an important decision needs to be made early on. Will the public 5G network give you the features you need, or should you build or source your own private 5G network? Although this seems simple, it’s an important factor in whether or not you become successful.

A lot of these decisions will be based on what the opportunity is and where it is needed.

If you want ultimate control over the network, with the best security measures in place, and the area you need to cover is not too big, then a private 5G network will work well for you.

However, if you are building a self-driving car, then you would need to use a public 5G provider as you will need national or global coverage.

There is also a hybrid model when you use a private 5G network for some key locations, but then fall back to public 5G between those locations.

Optimising 5G features

You also need to decide which feature of 5G you want to utilise because the 5G network can’t deliver all of its benefits to all users at the same time.

5G has a trick up its sleeve in “network slicing”. This is central to the success of 5G as it allows the creation of many isolated end-to-end logical networks that are tailored to an application’s individual needs. This overcomes the one-size-fits-all model of the existing 2G, 3G, and 4G networks.

In commercial terms, network slicing allows a mobile operator to create specific virtual networks that cater to particular clients and use cases. For example, mobile broadband will require higher speeds, industrial control will require lower latency, and autonomous cars require access to edge computing. By creating separate network slices that prioritise specific resources, a 5G network can offer tailored solutions to each user.

Managing security

We also need to think about security with all these new use cases. In simple terms, this can be broken down into three areas: application security, device security, and network security.

End users such as businesses will probably assume that all three of these areas have been addressed. The application developers should have ensured that their apps are secure, the device manufacturers should have ensured that their devices are secure, and the network operator should have ensured that their network is secure.

Many will do this and in the case of the network operator, the Technical Security Requirements (TSR) from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) stipulate how this should be done. However, businesses should in any case conduct cyber security due diligence around security as part of their internal processes.

In addition, we shouldn’t forget that it can be the end users who are the weakest link in the security chain – sometimes they are a little too busy to install that software update. In order to resolve this problem, companies need to ensure that valuable assets are protected; employee education and empowerment are of vital importance, alongside protecting all employee devices with comprehensive security measures.

As we use the 5G network for more significant applications, the effect of a security breach can be catastrophic. Take a simple DDoS attack for example. A DDoS attack against a gambling company will be annoying for users of that service, embarrassing and financially damaging for the business owner. Now imagine the same attack against an application controlling a remote surgical operation giving real-time video and control of a robotic knife.

5G will inevitably bring new opportunities to all of us, both as consumers, and business owners. But innovation takes time. Network operators have delayed rollout of 5GSA services – and business innovators needed an available and reliable service on which to innovate. However, we are starting to see trials of solutions that utilise the 5G service.

Innovating business operations with 5G

In today’s world, more data and insight equate to smarter operations. Take transportation and logistics as an example. 5G could deliver a step-change in the way goods are tracked. Imagine not just tracking a shipping container, but every item inside it, allowing for real-time updates of location and environment status. The ability of the 5G network can be used to provide fast, secure, and scalable access to such information.

This type of innovation won’t happen overnight. It is more likely to be an evolution. The timeline for innovation can be illustrated by what we see in the games console industry.

The latest platform is produced with leading-edge hardware and features. But the first release of a new game rarely uses the full potential of the platform. It is not until sometime later, when the game developer has had the opportunity to understand and test the potential of the new platform, that the most advanced features will be incorporated into the game.

The same will happen with 5G. There is a need to balance enthusiasm with testing and monitoring of both the performance and the security of these new opportunities. After all, nobody wants to be risking their business on a new 5G application while worrying about how much testing has been carried out, or if up-to-date security and monitoring solutions are being implemented.

The potential for new business opportunities that use 5G is massive and existing ideas are only scratching the surface.

Rob Pocock is Technical Director at Red Helix

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com