5G Myths and Predictions from a Network Engineer
The real 5G is basically a handset with a mini data centre underneath the radio mast from Google, Amazon or Microsoft. So Vodafone, for instance, have to compete for this product - they don’t want to be seen to be left behind, and they’re never going to be in a position where they can dictate the terms of where the technology goes, or what applications people choose.
We’re in a situation now where all the rage is around using 5G for driverless cars and virtual reality, and all the operators are promising that they’re the number one 5G network. But it's a marketing scam - they're selling 5G that still uses a 4G infrastructure. There’s actually only one real 5G core in America that I’m aware of with Verizon, one in Korea, maybe one in Japan. If you’re in Europe, and you have an interview with the major mobile operators, ask them to tell you about their 5G core and watch them go very quiet. There’s no end-to-end 5G anywhere in Europe.
Some of these companies are so involved with the technology and the science fiction of it, that they forget the human aspect with 5G - that in the UK we don’t like video calls, and we don’t trust driverless cars. We can get on a plane and know that the pilot isn’t doing much, the airplane is flying itself, we all know that, but because we’re social animals, we’re conditioned to trust the human more than the machine – this won’t change with 5G cars – it’s a giant leap for people.
In America, they’re currently in a place where net neutrality no longer exists, so if you’re a very wealthy streaming provider who doesn’t want to own their own network, you can prefer your own content to someone else’s, because you don’t need to provide equal access for everyone. So, Comcast might promote their content first for instance, which is scary stuff for the future of 5G.
With 5G, we’re able to separate the control plane and the data plane – the operator keeps control of the data plane and can separate it out, so the main terminology you’re going to hear is network slicing – watch that closely. Network slicing is extremely interesting – it’s where a mobile operator can actually say, I'm going to give you a private 5G network nationally, internationally, locally, or even in your house.
Right now, we're at a point where people running these projects are siloed; what that means is you get an expert who is very good at Amazon Web Services, or you get someone who is really good at Google Cloud, but what you need is to have an end to end picture with someone who knows about networking, mobile and APIs. I needed to learn python programming in the last two years just because I realised I really didn’t have a choice.
I’ve worked in video streaming the last 3-4 years as a CCIE, and it's clear to me that everyone wants their content on demand. Netflix, and all the main providers, have looked at live streaming, and with network slicing they may want to rent 5G from mobile operators - imagine if Amazon bought the rights to tennis, so you could pick it all up live on Amazon Prime.
At the moment I’m streaming my own little project on 8K video with 5G, and I’ve been working on an interactive show for kids, where the experience is very interactive. If you’re watching basketball wouldn’t it be nice to change the angle of the 3D camera on that last basket?
What I'm seeing is that with 5G, the content producers are going to have bigger stakes, and are going to start partnering up. Just to give you an idea, the achieved download speeds in Korea, and North America is 59Mb/s. It's fast, but what if you were told you were going to get 1Gb/s? So yes, we’ll get driverless cars, but the streaming future of 5G is more immediate and achievable – I mean, would you get in a driverless car?
The potential of 5G is much greater when you think from the human perspective, like in medicine. Watch the Apple watch closely, and Google too, because Android is going to be using that data.
The test and trace Covid19 app in the UK, if it were working properly with 5G, could:
• test your sweat, for instance, to check for coronavirus
• detect anyone who you had been in close contact with in the last 24 hours and warn them to quarantine
• tell you how many people in your area have the virus etc.
That’s not about revenue, like driverless cars, but it’s a more achievable and human goal for 5G. 5G should be about solving problems for humans right now, not thinking ahead 2 generations.
Duane Wright is a CCNP-R&S, JNCIP-ENT/SP, JNCIS-SEC, Project management PMP-ACP and member of the Hubbado IT network community.
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