Technology

Is 5G all it's cracked up to be?

Bigger, better, faster, more. The hype behind 5G is well known, but where does it really fit in the business? How does it benefit society? And what’s the deal with WiFi 6?

18 February 2021

First-generation wireles brought us voice, the next generation gave us text, and 3G handed us simple, mobile computing. Then came 4G, adding faster speeds, and a plethora of apps to improve our home and business lives. 5G opens the door to unprecedented speeds, which will help us download movies in a matter of seconds, enable self-driving cars, and much, much more, changing the stakes for businesses in every sector.

In short, 5G will bring us more of everything, says Roger Hislop, chairperson of the IoT Industry Council of South Africa (IOTIC). “Higher bandwidth, better latency, more concurrent sessions, greater control of network resources. How this ‘more of everything’ will translate into user benefits is somewhat debatable, and many of the use cases are extremely speculative, even fanciful. The bottom line is ‘bigger, better, faster, more’, but it would be wise to be a little cautious in believing the hype; 5G is an evolution of the existing mobile standards, not magic, and it’s certainly not the only radio communications technology out there.”

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