Global communications company Ericsson expects 5G to drive mobile data traffic 10 times faster by 2022.
Ericsson Philippines and Pacific Islands president and country manager Sean Gowran, in an Ericsson Mobility Report briefing at Shangri La Makati Hotel, said 5G, an advancement from today’s LTE technology, would redefine experience in terms of enhanced mobile broadband, automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities.
He said download speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second that are now commercially available in Australia and have been tested in Singapore enable the possibility for high-definition or real-time video streaming from consumers almost anywhere.
Regional app coverage data show that the minimum required network speed increased in many countries, including the Philippines. “Our analysis of mobile broadband app coverage across the region shows that the Philippines has improved year-on-year,” said Gowran.
However, the challenge for the company in connecting the unconnected lies in affordability literacy, and provision of relevant services – rather than the availability of technology.
The use of old branded cellphones will still be relevant when 5G subscription expands in 2022, but without the access to its new features. GSM users would more likely have more difficulty on accessing the new features of 5G in 2022, according to Gowran.
“Life would not be really fantastic for the GSM users for 2022,” he said.
Gorwan said concerns on network optimization through analytics, massive IoT coverage in the city, and remote operation of vehicles with 5G.
Ericsson, a leader in communications technology and services, foresees “driverless buses on city streets” along with the 5G, which will develop remote monitoring, control capabilities and safety assurance. Its focus is to build a testbed to study and demonstrate feasibility of remote supervision and teleportation of connected vehicles using cellular networks on Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication.
Gowran said Asia Pacific will lead the global rollout of 5G with its 28 million subscriptions and 180 million cellular IoT subscriptions, along with North America, which will account for around 10 percent of the region’s subscription by 2022.
Countries that are expected to be among the early adopters of 5G are South Korea in 2018, and Japan and China by 2020.
