How could 5G drive growth in a post-COVID economy?

5G represents a milestone in the technological progression of mobile communication. Once the network infrastructure reaches full scale deployment, this technology is destined to have far-reaching influence - with scope for almost every aspect of our daily lives to benefit from it. It will be the foundation upon which our factories are made more productive, as well as making our cities less congested and polluted. It will encourage innovation in relation to treatment of patients and have a pivotal role to play as we move towards an era of driverless vehicles.

5G promises a dramatic ramp up in the data rates that the network can deliver, as well as allowing a much greater number of connections to be supported by each cell. In time, though it must be made clear that this is not encompassed within the initial 5G standard specifications, it will also enable latency levels to be reduced by several orders of magnitude.

A multitude of lucrative new opportunities that would have previously been inconceivable can be addressed via 5G technology. A study compiled by IHS Markit (published in late 2019) underlines the potential here. It projects that the use cases enabled by 5G will contribute a staggering $13.2 trillion to the global economy by 2035 and be responsible for generating more than 22 million jobs.

Though the expectations of what can be achieved using 5G technology have certainly not changed, with the arrival of COVID-19, the timeframe is now perhaps slightly less clear. Certain obstacles will need to be overcome before some of its key objectives can be fully met. At the same time, there are new dynamics that are starting to have a major influence. These will lead to some elements of 5G development actually being accelerated significantly. Exciting times therefore lie ahead.
 

The fundamental drivers of 5G

Figure 1: The core technological objectives fo 5G and the use cases enabled (Source: ITU)

• Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) - which will deliver 100x better network coverage and data rates reaching 20Gb/s. This will mean bandwidth-hungry multimedia applications can be enjoyed by subscribers, and allow mobile services to be accessed in even the busiest of locations such as sports stadiums or music festivals.
• Massive machine-type communication (mMTC) - this will push up the number of connections that cellular networks support, with as much as a million inside a square km area. It will lead to the establishing of somewhere in the region of 100 billion cellular network connections within the next decade, and drive the Internet of Things (IoT), more sophisticated industrial automation systems and smart city initiatives.
• Ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) - still a work in progress, this will be added to later 5G specifications. Through it, networks will be able to support latency levels below 1ms, translating into much quicker responsiveness. This will be of value with respect to autonomous driving, tactile surgery and Industry 4.0.
   

The mechanics behind it

At its foundation, 5G will lead to a shift away from hardware-based topologies and increasing virtualisation, which is advantageous for mobile operators from both a CAPEX and OPEX perspective. This will make networks more agile and adaptable - allowing available resources to be assigned in the most efficient way in order to meet the given application requirements. It will also mean that changes can be made dynamically, as circumstances dictate. In addition, 5G distinguishes itself from earlier mobile communication generations in terms of the air interface between the base station and connected devices. It will employ different sections of the RF spectrum, as well as relying on innovative methodologies.

The advent of 5G New Radio (NR) will leverage a variety of pioneering technologies in order to provide an effective air interface. Thanks to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), the allocated RF spectrum will be more effectively utilised. It will allow multiple overlapping frequency sub-channels to carry data without there being any interference witnessed between them. Through use of mmWave frequencies, dramatically heightened data rates will be supported, resulting in shorter upload and download times for subscribers. This will, however, markedly increase the density of infrastructure - as only short-range transmissions will be possible via mmWave. Greater emphasis will therefore be placed on small cell deployment. Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) will allow the same channel to be simultaneously accessed by numerous subscribers, while beamforming will result in focused data transmissions direct to connected devices.
 

The obstacles to overcome

So, where does 5G stand post-COVID? Back in the spring, during the height of the lockdown in Europe, GSMA Intelligence announced that it was revising its forecast on the number of 5G connections that would be in place by the end of 2020 - lowering the figure by over 25%, with a total of approximately 150 million connections by then.

The lockdown period brought both operational and logistical problems, and these have caused project hold-ups. Firstly difficulties were experienced in relation to the supply lines, followed by problems with regard to the implementing and testing of network infrastructure.

There have been delays to 5G spectrum auctions, most notably in Europe. Some countries will not be selling off the required frequency bands until the early stages of next year (UK, Sweden, South Africa, for example), and for others (such as Canada and India) it will not be until next summer. However, economies like the USA, France, Germany and the Netherlands, have all managed to stay fairly on track with their auctions. This gives us all good reason to remain optimistic.
 

Imminent 5G opportunities  

Though supply chain issues, deployment problems and more cautious spending have delayed 5G’s traction a little in the short term, it is clear that in the medium/long term things are still very promising. In fact, it could be argued that the prospects for 5G are even better than before the COVID crisis occurred.

Admittedly, the GSMA has already stated that it expects immediate demand for 5G connectivity from enterprise customers to be lower than originally expected. This is understandable given the shift to telecommuting, and enterprise customers needing to see what the working landscape will look like before making a firm commitment to capital investment. In contrast to this, the need to ensure social distancing within factory environments will call for the installation of heightened degrees of industrial automation, as well as greater prevalence of drones and automated guided vehicles (AGVs). Consequently, there is likely to be much greater urgency to implement 5G private networks at manufacturing and processing sites. Likewise, there will be an intensified need for use of virtual reality (VR) in industrial inspection work, as well as for educational purposes - since there will be regulations in place that restrict performing these functions in the usual way. Prolonged social distancing measures are going to mean that municipalities need to invest in an array of different smart city initiatives over the coming months. Many of these will be dependent on cellular IoT, with a sizeable proportion requiring the enhanced bandwidth and power efficiency characteristics that only 5G can offer (as opposed to existing NB-IoT or LTE-M protocols). In addition, with a much larger number of people now having to work from home, we are seeing an increased reliance on cloud services. This obviously presents another important new opening from a commercial standpoint.
 

Conclusion

Whilst COVID has hampered the progression of 5G to some extent, it certainly has not halted it. There is increased demand from sources not previously predicted. 5G definitely has the potential to improve the lives of the global population and boost the economy. In fact, in certain respects, its importance has actually been reaffirmed, as our lifestyles and working behaviour alter in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. Moving forwards, the industry needs to have a good understanding about which of the use cases now emerging should be prioritised. Efforts need to be made to ensure that the supply channels are robust enough, and access can be gained to the core technology.