What New Applications Can 5g Bring Us in Two Or Three Years?

Manufacturers talk about 5g as the Savior of so many applications because the bandwidth becomes higher and these large traffic contents can be delivered in real time and quickly, then these applications will be very popular. But these beautiful visions can't be achieved at present. Is it because 4G bandwidth is not enough? Obviously not!

The main reason why the Internet of things is not popular is that the new value of Internet access is lower than the cost.

The main reason why VR and Ar are not popular is that the equipment is too expensive and there is no killer application.

The main reason why 4K and 8K are not popular is that the equipment is too expensive, there is no content, and users can not feel the image quality difference of resolutions above FHD.

If the above key factors are solved later, these applications will indeed use higher network bandwidth, but it is not necessarily mobile network bandwidth. At present, the network in many families has reached 100Mbps. Let these people be willing to watch VR and 8K on the sofa, and then think about why they want to do these things with 5g on the road.

So what's the significance of 5g in front of you? From the perspective of mobility, we look at two network classifications:

Mobile network: 4G is now widely used and 5g is highly expected. Its feature is wireless, and users can move for a long distance (more than several kilometers). It can be used indoors and outdoors. Mobile phone is a representative application. Generally speaking, the rate of 4G is 100Mbps, while the rate of 5g is 1Gbps. But that is in an ideal environment. Because the mobile environment is easily affected by shielding or distance, it is ideal to have a speed of 50% in general.

Fixed point network: simply speaking, it is the combination of Wi Fi and wired network to form a stable and high-speed network at fixed points (usually in buildings). In Taiwan, ordinary people can apply for 1Gbps optical fiber home, and there are even 10Gbps services in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong. 1Gbps Wi Fi 5 has become very popular, and 10Gbps Wi Fi 6 has just begun to enter the market. In other words, it is not difficult for ordinary people to have a 1Gbps fixed-point network.

The significance of 5g is to increase the speed of the mobile network as fast as the fixed-point network, and it can serve a large number of online services at the same time.

Therefore, 5g can replace the fixed-point network, but the stability will be poor.

When the location is inconvenient to set up a fixed-point network, pay less attention to network stability, and 4G network speed is not enough, 5g is suitable for use. For example, if you hold a short-term activity in a place with 1000 participants and there is no ready-made fixed-point network, connect Wi Fi with 5g sharer and provide it to users.

Sounds weak and has nothing to do with ordinary people? Yes, that's why manufacturers have come up with VR, AR, 4K and 8K applications. It sounds awesome.

So 5g doesn't work for ordinary people? Not right. According to the network experience report of open signal, the average 4G network speed in Taiwan is about 30mbps, which is very sufficient, but it will not be enough in extreme situations. For example, when the bus is crowded during commuting hours, because the network is shared, a large number of people are crowded in a small area, and everyone's bandwidth will be too small to use or even connect.

That is, at present, 5g has only two meanings:

5g can be used where it is inconvenient to set up a fixed-point network and a high-speed network is required.

In the case of extreme congestion, it can provide good enough mobile network quality.

In the next year, 5g will be just like this. And then?

Let's take a look at the (Internet of things) IOT, VR, AR, 4K and 8K claimed by manufacturers.

First of all, it is unreasonable to watch 4K and 8K in a mobile environment, because in terms of the size of the mobile phone, the human eye can't distinguish the resolution above 1080p. 4K and 8K should be watched indoors with a large-size TV.

VR should be used indoors, because after wearing VR glasses, you can't see the external environment, so it's not necessary to use VR outdoors.

The above two categories must be used indoors, that is, it is reasonable to use a fixed-point network instead of 5g.

The Internet of things and Ar are left.

The Internet of things is a category, and the equipment is very changeable. Refrigerators, lights, meters, automobiles, industrial equipment... All can be called IOT. However, as mentioned earlier, 5g is not the first 1Gbps high-speed network, but a high-speed mobile network. Fixed point networks such as optical fiber Wi Fi should be used indoors, and its stability is much greater than 5g. In short, 5g should not be used for all long-term indoor iots.

What are the outdoor iots? Cars, traffic signals, surveillance cameras, etc. However, the car is not suitable for 5g, mainly because the penetration of 5g signal is poor. When the car shuttles in different places, the signal will be good and bad, and the stability is not ideal. It's better to use 4G.

Some network articles mentioned that 5g network latency is very small, which is suitable for the application of Internet of vehicles, which requires rapid response. This view is wrong. The latency of 4G is 0.05 seconds. In fact, it is fast enough. The biggest problem of mobile network is not latency, but stability. A signal instability is a Caton for several seconds. Moreover, due to the physical characteristics, 5g signal will be much less penetrating than 4G, which is easier to be unstable.

The outdoor fixed-point IOT is an appropriate scene for 5g. For example, the outdoor monitoring camera is very suitable for 5g because of its large flow and fixed-point. If it is confirmed that the signal at this point is good, the stability of the signal will not change. However, if you want to be a monitor camera manufacturer, you don't have to wait for 5g. Generally, the streaming video traffic of 1080p is about 3mbps. Now 4G is enough. You can start with 4G. After 4G is used more and more, and the allocated bandwidth is not enough, you can upgrade to 5g.

What about ar? In the long run, I think this is the new generation application that is most likely to use 5g, or "smart glasses" may be the revolutionary application that needs 5g most. This topic is more complicated. I will write a special article to discuss it later.

So what new applications can 5g bring us in two or three years?

Let's take a look at the comparison between network speed and applications to understand the bandwidth requirements of ordinary people.

It takes about 3mbps to watch 1080p streaming movies. The current 4G is doing well.

It takes about 100Mbps to watch 8K streaming movies.

The access speed of local hard disk is about 1Gbps. That is, when the network speed reaches 1Gbps, there is no difference in user experience between accessing cloud hard disk or local hard disk.

Blurring the experience gap between cloud hard disk and local hard disk is a qualitative change brought by 5g. Hereinafter referred to as "non inductive cloud hard disk".

This has several benefits:

The local end device can be lighter and save power, and can store an unlimited amount of data

100% of the data is in the cloud

In practical application scenarios, the effects are:

Different devices of the same user, whether mobile phones or computers, share 100% of the same data. Unlike most people who now use cloud hard drives, most of them put selected content in the cloud. When there are many devices and the selection criteria are not well thought out, the data will be lost and out of synchronization.

A further possibility is that the software no longer needs to be installed. Anyway, the speed of real-time download and installation is as fast as that already installed locally.

Further, since the cloud hard disk is as fast as the local hard disk, just move the operating system (OS) to the cloud! It means that as like as two peas, you can use the same OS to download the computer hardware from home, library, hotel and so on. You can get the same experience.

100% of the data of different users can be used by the same big brother (Google, Microsoft, Dropbox...). If the big brother gets more big data, more potential AI applications may appear.

Although some people will question whether this will have the problem of privacy, as now most people's emails are seen by Google, we feel very used to it. Historical facts tell us that consumers do not care so much about privacy as long as the benefits are large enough.

The second qualitative change brought about by 5g is that the local computer is no longer a computer, but plays the role of image player. Hereinafter referred to as "full-time cloud computing".

This means that the local computer on the user's hand (broadly speaking, including mobile phone, computer, smart TV, etc.) does not need to bear the work of computing, but transmits the user's operation signal to the cloud supercomputer, and then the cloud transmits the calculated picture back to the computer on the user's hand for broadcasting. Therefore, the local computer can do very well, As long as you are responsible for display and input, you can reduce the cost and volume, but have the performance experience of advanced computer / mobile phone.

Similar applications existed more than ten years ago, but they have not been popularized. For example, the "remote desktop" of windows is still used by professional engineers for professional purposes. "Cloud Games" is a hot field. OnLive has provided such services as early as 2010. Later, Yahoo, Sony, NVIDIA and Google's upcoming stadia all want to grab this big cake, but no one has succeeded.

In terms of "full-time cloud computing", 4G network speed has been able to provide a good experience. (source: IOT home network) but 5g can ensure that even if more people use these new applications later, there will be no traffic jam, improve market opportunities, give manufacturers more motivation to invest more resources to promote, and have more opportunities to form a popular ecosystem.

Finally, come to the conclusion:

5g will not bring any immediate breakthrough, but become a fixed-point network with poor stability. It is more reasonable to use outdoor fixed-point scenes, including outdoor fixed-point activities, outdoor surveillance cameras, etc.

The impact of 5g in the next two or three years is mainly to make products with mature technology but immature market more likely to succeed, including senseless cloud hard disk, full-time cloud computing, etc.

In the longer term, the future ar glasses or smart glasses, combined with 5g and AI, will have a revolutionary breakthrough comparable to that of smart phones.