Featured
Prepare for the future
From global equipment providers to local regulators, the groundwork for the 5G future is being laid. We must all begin preparing, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.
Since then, an upgraded form of 3G called LTE, along with 4G, have arrived, and we are at the dawn of 5G. The new standard was finalised at the end of last year, and compatible equipment is steadily being rolled out. However, a combination of the cost of new networks and the slow piece of regulation means it will probably be another four years before we see true 5G in South Africa.
According to the latest edition of the annual Mobility Report from global equipment maker Ericsson, mobile broadband only accounted for around 5 percent of mobile subscriptions in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2017 – compared to 20 percent for the whole Middle East and Africa. Ericsson expects this region to rise to 90 percent in the next five years, driven by a young and growing population with increasing digital skills,
as well as more affordable smartphones. By then, 5G will also have entered the mix, with Ericsson suggesting significant volumes of users coming on board in 2022.
By the following year, more than a fifth of the world’s population will be covered by 5G, and we can expect smartphones, computers and networks to be completely transformed by the massive speed increases this suggests.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in las Vegas in January, Intel demonstrated a 1.6Gb/second link over a single 5G mobile connection, streaming a 4K movie and a high-definition virtual reality movie over the same link, “with bandwidth to spare”.
This tells us the future is coming at us so fast. For businesses as well as consumers, it is sometimes easier to batten down the hatches and pretend the storm isn’t happening than to go out and face it head-on.
After all, many businesses, consumers and organisations will strive to continue doing things the way they always have. That means they can be served in the same way as always, with the same kinds of products. The problem with that approach, however, is that, at some point, the penny drops that the world has moved on, the competition has moved on, and they’ve been left behind.
At the Cisco Live conference Barcelona earlier this year, the company presented eight distinct categories of technology change that it had distilled from the World Economic Forum proceedings a few weeks before. From robotics and artificial intelligence to the Internet of Things and data analytics, any one of these represents a shift in the way business will buy technology. Taken together, the eight categories represent a tidal wave of change.
This was also an overriding message at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas at the beginning of May. Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, told delegates in his keynote address: “At first the power of digital transformation was a secret that only we in the IT industry knew. But now the secret of digital transformation has burst onto the public consciousness.
“Every customer I meet is reimagining how they use technology. Tech is now at the very top of the agenda for business leaders everywhere, because today technology strategy is business strategy.”
Later, he told a media briefing that business globally is in a technology-led investment cycle. He is seeing an explosion in use cases for artificial intelligence, which includes neural networking, machine learning and deep learning.
(Continue reading on how AI is entering every industry) AI is entering every industry)
