Is 5G the missing piece of the digital twin puzzle?

In this always-connected digital age, 5G technology could be the solution to many of the user experience headaches that businesses face. The current COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed businesses and customer expectations. The growing reliance on digital technologies has not only forced businesses to change their business models to adapt to the new market realities, but has also made it difficult for them to keep up with “always-connected” customers and their expectations. Now, with the arrival of 5G, given its potential to transform business and digital experiences, businesses must move faster to realize its potential.

5G technology has many use cases in itself. But there are many existing use cases that can simply be expanded by it. For example, 5G has good high-speed connectivity, higher bandwidth and lower latency will enable new business models with a wider range of services and immersive experiences for industries such as BFSI, retail, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, education, media and entertainment, and can even be provided on mobile handheld devices.

Let’s look at some use cases that show how 5G will revolutionize digital services and experiences.

Smart City

5G could be the final piece of the puzzle for smart cities. Smart cities involve always-connected sensors and devices that generate exponential amounts of real-time data. If managed properly, this real-time data can create new opportunities for smart buildings, smart lighting, smart metering, smart transportation, and improve smart governance and service delivery efficiency of smart city infrastructure.

Smart Transportation

Truly connected cars will become a reality. With 5G, cars will become software-defined, network-aware, hyper-connected, and will interact with all other vehicles on the road and around them. 5G-enabled cars will allow drivers to enjoy their favorite entertainment apps like music streaming services or audiobook services from the comfort of their car. Smart vehicles and real-time traffic management will also make daily commutes faster. In fact, 5G will allow drones to fly with great precision, making drones a key part of transportation and logistics.

Smart Home

5G offers a viable alternative to fixed internet access and is expected to drive the rapid adoption of smart home products and solutions in homes. The impact of rolling out internet connectivity on smart home devices and appliances could be huge and will ultimately change the way we live and work, especially considering that working from home and remote working have become the new reality over the past two years.

Immersive learning and training

5G has the potential to change teaching, training, and learning to a great extent, making them truly immersive. AR, VR, and XR have already begun to drive education towards a more experiential dimension, and 5G will create more opportunities in education and training environments, making it easier to explain complex and abstract concepts to students in a rich experiential environment.

Immersive Gaming and Entertainment

5G can bring a platform-agnostic future to gaming. Mobile gamers are increasingly exposed to immersive multiplayer gaming experiences that were previously limited to consoles and PCs. Cloud gaming, XR gaming, and 5G will enable more premium games to run on mobile phones.

Avneet Rana, co-founder and technical director of Baazi Games, believes that India is one of the most promising gaming markets, which will lead to the emergence of a large number of mobile gamers. 5G networks will provide faster, lower-latency connections, enabling smartphone gamers to experience higher-quality, uninterrupted cloud gaming sessions. In addition to a variety of premium games with HD streaming and longer gaming sessions, users will also be able to experience VR gaming on multiple platforms and modes. In addition, the combination of 5G and AI can significantly improve and enhance the gaming experience. 5G will also be able to provide a trouble-free, delay-free and higher-speed experience at the same time.

Internet streaming content has fundamentally changed consumer behavior and the home entertainment space, and will continue to evolve further with 5G. Live events will take full advantage of the speed and potential of 5G, with sports, concerts, live performances, movie premieres, and all of these location-based events being able to reach a truly global audience across time zones.

Metaverse

As 5G continues to blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds, its impact on the Metaverse economy may be far more interesting than we expect. For example, right now you need a wired connection or Wi-Fi to connect to the Metaverse, but the high-bandwidth and low-latency 5G networks will allow people to use full-featured VR headsets or similar hardware on the go.

Tejinder Singh, Product Head, Lava International, said: “The Metaverse is a new frontier that has the potential to transform the way people connect and interact in their social lives and workspaces. Many use cases will emerge in the Metaverse powered by 5G technology. Real-time digital movement to other locations in the Metaverse with the ability to touch and feel will only be possible if high-speed networks can support the same capabilities made possible through 5G networks.