Empowering IDC infrastructure, can 5G achieve data transmission at the speed of light?

The fifth generation of cellular networks is getting closer to reality, as Telstra Australia has announced plans to launch 5G technology in the first half of 2019. However, this shift goes far beyond faster upload and download speeds, with 5G set to impact the adoption of a wide range of devices, from drones and security cameras to the Internet of Things and industrial robots.

Take the all-powerful smartphone: it can be used in every aspect of life. As a result, “smartphone addiction” has become a priority, with some even limiting the amount of time spent on specific apps. As increasingly sophisticated algorithms tune apps and websites to people’s specific interests and contexts, it’s unlikely that people’s interest in smartphone use will fade anytime soon.

However, the rollout of 5G has the potential to impact this by creating seamless interactions using innovative technologies such as voice and gesture technology. Voice assistant speakers (both in the home and for smartphones) grew 200% in 2018, highlighting how people’s behaviour is being shaped by smart devices.

To successfully create a completely seamless and invisible network of wirelessly connected IoT devices, data needs to be transmitted, stored, and processed at fast speeds, and these operations need to be not only fast but also consistent and highly reliable.

The impact of 5G on data center infrastructure

So how will 5G affect the infrastructure needed to enable these technological advances? Its definition of connectivity is that it can theoretically transmit information and data at nearly the speed of light through optical fiber. That’s nearly 1,000 times faster than the fastest current fiber-optic networks.

It is expected that by 2025, more than 75 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, subsequently creating more data than in the past decade. In the coming years, people will need higher capacity to reliably and consistently transmit data at faster speeds. When it comes to 5G applications, consistency and reliability are as important as speed.

The importance of speed and consistency for future innovation

Imagine a surgeon being able to perform surgery remotely via a robot. Faster network speeds are needed to ensure that every operation performed by the surgeon is executed in real time. But perhaps more important than speed in this case is eliminating latency and introducing precise error correction, which could mean the difference between life and death.

How to eliminate lag

The same idea can be applied to many scenarios, such as self-driving vehicles, or firefighters being able to extinguish fires remotely. If the brakes are applied too late or the fire is delayed, it will have a greater impact than the buffering time of a movie on a smartphone.

Therefore, backend data needs to be placed on a dedicated network, separate from the congestion created by other applications.

5G at the Edge

Edge computing also plays a big role in 5G. Logically, the closer the data is to where it is processed, the faster it can be transmitted and computed. As a result, we are beginning to see more emphasis on localized distributed computing capabilities to support critical applications with lower latency and higher resiliency.

However, enterprises will always need centralized core processing, and even the most advanced micro data centers cannot handle all tasks at the edge. As 5G technology advances in the coming years, network architectures will become faster and more powerful, which will eventually curb the need for powerful edge computing.

The future of 5G

While we know that 5G will one day be the invisible fabric that wirelessly connects all devices and applications, it is difficult to predict exactly what the future of 5G technology will look like. What we do know is that the amount of data that will be created in the coming years will increase significantly, which means that the future development of 5G will require more capacity for reliable, consistent and near-instantaneous speeds.