An essential top-of-the-mind question in enterprise technology leaders is how will 5G impact the enterprise?

The dream of universal wireless connectivity is slowly progressing toward reality. Beginning with the widespread adoption of smartphone technology, the world has indeed been growing increasingly wireless.

Eventually, enterprises can look to a future where their IT departments no longer have to run lengths of cable throughout the premises to connect employees with one another as well as with customers, vendors, investors, and others.

Instead, they’ll be capitalizing on the portion of the radio spectrum where high-frequency bands allow for the latest in 5G. And it’s not just people who will benefit from improved connectivity. Equipment (such as sensors) that needs to communicate with other devices automatically will be easier to network using the new 5G iteration.

That has implications for the burgeoning use of Internet of Things or iOT devices as well as for how enterprises will be handling artificial intelligence and machine learning

As the GSMA predicts, there will be 1.8 billion 5G connections by the year 2025, with 50% of developed Asia, 48% of North America, and 34% of Europe adopting the latest generation of wireless.

It’s prudent for you and fellow stakeholders to start preparing for 5G if you haven’t been doing so already. What’s promised is faster connections, the capability to support more devices than ever before with lower latency times, and the ability to create new, complex network connections, such as for vehicle fleets. It’s clear that 5G will lead to many changes that could affect not only your bottom line, but the entire future of your enterprise.

How will 5G Impact the Enterprise?

Industry professionals know that the term 5G refers to the 5th generation of mobile wireless connectivity. Nutanix pointed out that 5G offers upload and download speeds as much as 20 times faster than the previous 4G network. While 4G systems can transmit 100 megabits each second (not always; the high end being under carefully controlled testing conditions), 5G is set to deliver 10 gigabits each second.

For context, the Federal Communications Commission says that while it takes about 6 minutes to download a feature-length movie over 4G networks, it will take only about 15 seconds to download that file over 5G.

If you’re thinking about gearing up for 5G in your enterprise soon, you’re not the only company with this idea. Approximately 57% of companies now plan to start using 5G within 1 to 3 years and as many as 13% say they’re prepared to use 5G within the next 12 months, according to a Statista report.

5G Considerations for Enterprises

It’s never too soon to start preparing your organization for the changes and benefits that will come with rolling out 5G. You may want to establish a point person on your team for organizing 5G deployment.

For some enterprises, there’s no room for delay. In the U.S., companies have been asking employees to work from home for social distancing. With more people than ever before working from home because of social distancing efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus causing COVID-19 infections, there is a greater need for high bandwidth and reliable connections, as pointed out by Nasdaq.

Since we never know when the next pandemic might strike, causing more stay-at-home lockdowns and orders to shelter in place, arranging 5G for your enterprise could make the difference between riding out the next pandemic or having to close your doors due to a weak computational setup.

There are a lot of variables to keep track of during evaluation and comparison of equipment as well as software for 5G setup, and then comes the task of installation, setup, and testing. At the end, you may also need to provide extra training to staff on harnessing the new 5G capabilities to their full potential.

Begin by assessing your business, reimaging how things would change if your bandwidth capacity and data transmission speeds were suddenly boosted thanks to 5G. That’s the advice of InformationWeek, which noted that it’s not a straightforward process to deploy 5G. The huge amounts of data need to be managed, otherwise, you’re just collecting ones and zeros that your team can’t turn into action plans.

For example, you may begin automating more of your processes and then turn to artificial intelligence solutions for machine learning to process and gain value from huge troves of data. This implies a need to use analytics, to better understand all of the various bits of data as it’s collected, stored, and then analyzed.

You will also need to review the state of your computational infrastructure. For example, are your usual vendors currently prepared to offer 5G services to you now, or if not, when will they be ready? Are your networks prepared for the higher bandwidth of 5G, and have you carefully planned how much additional storage capacity you’ll need to handle the deluge of data?

And finally, it’s crucial to determine how prepared your IT staff is for the change. If they’re not fully prepared now, some advanced training is in order. InformationWeek explained that companies in the United States will spend up to $150 billion to install new fiber optic cable to address all of the data transmission requirements they’ll be facing, citing a Deloitte study underscoring potential security concerns that may arise if organizations are rushed in their 5G rollout.

Use Cases on How will 5G impact the Enterprise?

A good way to envision how 5G can improve your enterprise and help bring about greater capabilities and efficiencies is to consider some relevant use case examples.

* Broadband Wireless Access: Maintaining fixed access to wireless in your enterprise means you can get rid of your old wired broadband network or keep it only for use as an emergency backup. 5G gives you faster connections to more devices simultaneously, enabling better collaboration.

* Machinery Connections: From facilitating connections between a myriad of iOT devices to machines of all sizes and capabilities, 5G is seen as a crucial aspect of so-called Industry version 4.0. With more automated machinery and robotic systems connected to cloud computing servers, you can anticipate 5G to improve your manufacturing processes.

* Security and Monitoring: Video surveillance systems are a major component of enterprise security. Higher quality video feeds (to allow police to tease out important details about criminals) mean higher bandwidth and storage requirements, which 5G systems enable quite well. 5G can play a major role in your security system.

* Fleet Vehicles: Networking vehicles in your organization’s fleet allows for more safety and security. Cars will provide their location in real-time, for monitoring employee activity as well as to provide better situational awareness. Nokia noted that 74% of users responding to a survey of 1,000 IT decision makers indicate they find the prospect of connected vehicles via 5G to be appealing. This is particularly the situation for cars used by security details as well as for transporting non-employees.

* Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality: Augmented reality typically uses electronic glasses that project or overlay new information over a video feed of your environment taken from embedded cameras. Virtual reality substitutes a video feed of reality and instead presents an entirely synthetic world. Both types of immersive experiences will be well within the grasp of enterprises for training, marketing, and entertainment thanks to the high bandwidth and low latency connections made possible with 5G.

Making the Connection

You and your colleagues certainly have a lot to consider when it comes to deploying 5G solutions for your enterprise. Chances are you’ll need to hire outside IT consultants to support your staff during the transition, as well as arrange for employee training on the new capabilities 5G brings.

You may focus your 5G deployment on capturing, storing, and analyzing enormous sets of data and using AI with machine learning to process the raw information. Or, you start by setting up more iOT devices, such as to support operations on the factory floor or to gather information on various key processes. Some enterprises will be transformed just by networking their fleets of vehicles with 5G connectivity.

Since gearing up to absorb the upcoming torrent of data, let alone using it successfully (and most productively) in artificial intelligence tasks may be beyond the capabilities of your current IT department, you may determine it will be best to rely on help from experienced and knowledgeable 5G experts, such as expert third parties you hire to consult with your staff.

What is your view on how will 5G impact the enterprise? And how are you planning on implementing 5G in your company?