5G is here: Explore benefits and use cases at HPE Discover 2019

[IsaacRo]

5G has been in development for years, but only recently has 5G standards-compliant equipment begun to pour into the marketplace. We’re still at the early stages of 5G’s hockey-stick growth, but by 2023, there will be an estimated 1 billion 5G mobile subscriptions, with more than 20 percent of the world’s population covered by 5G. It’s not just consumers who will profit, either: A recent Gartner survey found that some two-thirds of organizations plan to deploy 5G by 2020.

5G brings three fundamental benefits that will drive adoption:

1. High bandwidth: 5G has 10 Gbps uplink speeds, which is not only far faster than existing 4G standards, but also opens up a world of possibilities for business users, from high-definition augmented reality to real-time video analytics.
2. Support for massive device density. Thanks to network slicing, QoS routing, and other features, 5G can rapidly scale to accommodate new devices, sensors, and services.
3. Ultra-low latency. Latency throughout for a typical network is 16 ms or greater. With 5G, the target is 1 ms on the radio interface, with some telcos aiming for sub-millisecond latency between nearby nodes.

These benefits have huge implications for business users. This is especially true in remote environments, located far from the traditional data center. For enterprises like a manufacturer, the edge is the factory floor or warehouse; or for an oil producer, the edge is in the middle of a desert or the sea where oil is being extracted. This is not a new trend anymore: shifting applications and workloads out to the edge, closer to where the data is generated. By 2025, 75% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud, up from 10% today.

For a CSP, the edge will include everything between their core/cloud and the last hop in their network, before it reaches the end user: existing and new 5G cell towers, regional data centers and everything in between. Likewise, they will be in the need to shift their workloads, applications and extending network functions from the core out to the edge, in order to achieve the levels of service in each of the three critical features above and to fulfill the 5G promise.

Further, 5G in seamless integration with existing WiFi infrastructure running on the latest IEEE standard (WiFi6) will serve as a force multiplier for IoT, enabling an exponential number of people and device connections, extending the reach and capabilities of existing IT infrastructure and applications. 5G and WiFi will make it possible to take IoT and device data, pre-process at the edge (through AI and business applications) and send it to cloud services to perform analysis in real time, enabling near real-time response instructions back to the system and more importantly, unlock possibilities for innovation never seen before, reducing costs and developing new sources of revenue.

Practically speaking, what sorts of experiences will 5G deliver? Consider the following examples.

Consumer:

• Streaming 4K video on your mobile device
• VR-enabled digital shopping,
• Augmented reality with navigation and identification overlays

Industrial:

• Visual remote guidance and maintenance with AR/VR
• Condition monitoring of manufacturing assets
• Predictive and prescriptive maintenance
• Workforce safety, security, and productivity tracking

Smart Cities and Public Spaces:

• Real-time crowd control and public security
• Autonomous vehicle and drone fleets

At HPE Discover 2019 in Las Vegas, you will have a chance to see innovative applications, infrastructure, and service offerings from HPE and its broad partner ecosystem, and to imagine how 5G could impact your organization’s digital transformation. Download the conference guide here.