Although integration of 5G technology is still nascent, Chinese technology manufacturer has, Huawei has predicted that its value in the global economy could reach $7.5 trillion by 2030 compared to the $5.1 trillion 4G contributed in 2019.
The race for the fifth generation of mobile networks has gathered momentum attracting not big private sector investors but also regulators across the world. There are over 80 5G networks commercially available in the world today. The next phase, for many stakeholders, is determining how to leverage 5G to create more value in society.
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At its 5G+, Better World Summit which held virtually recently, Huawei highlighted four aspects that require urgent attention. These include technology; ecosystem; standards; and business model. The company says 5G’s most impact would be in the commercial sector.
“We expect that 5G will transform businesses in the same way 4G transformed consumers,” Dimitris Mavrakis, research director of ABI Research, said during the summit.
The manufacturing sector, however, might take a longer time to fully embrace the technology. But the extent of adoption of 5G would largely depend on what opportunities or incentives governments in various countries provide. One of these incentives could be the provisioning of a free 5G spectrum and the reduction in taxation of carriers.
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Other industries that could benefit from 5G deployment include ports and agriculture. This is already being seen as 5G enables a variety of smart farming methods that have a significant impact on the yields of farms in the country.
Examples in countries like Switzerland include multispectral imaging of wheat fields by drones resulting in a 10 percent decrease in fertiliser; tractors with an automated hoe that recognises plants and eliminates the weeds around them; and the swift delivery of important intelligence to the cloud which ensures that automated robots receive data to update their machine learning capabilities, while farmers also receive insights into how they can optimise their processes.
Experts also expect 5G to increase factories’ efficiency by 30 percent while reducing costs by the same margin. In China, for instance, 5G is used with remote-controlled cranes and slag-adding arms to streamline the factory’s processes, and these cranes have improved production efficiency by 33 percent.
