5G has moved beyond theory into the practical realm. Although not yet ubiquitous, we can now see the early practical uses of 5G networks. Today's speakers will share deployement on 5G Home, AR, Health Care, Climate Change, Remote Driving and more. Join us to meet these innovators offering new solutions leveraging 5G capabilities.
Silicon Valley, California, March 11 2022/Meeting Recap/ As we enter deeper into the decade, the subject matter of our 5G meetings have changed from “what could be” to “What IS”. This year’s 5G meeting was about “Applied 5G”, meaning we gathered a cadre of innovators and network operators to tell us about their solutions, which are actually deployed, in the form of case studies.
5G remains one of the hot topics in telecom, and as the technology advances in the real world, we are increasingly interested in its practical applications. Part of the challenge of 5G is that 4G LTE is so good that it is hard to imagine novel applications which will be enabled by 5G. But, if our experience with the “Gs” has taught us anything, it’s that as network operators offer new capabilities, innovators surely find ways to build value on that platform.
Our meeting opened with a presentation from Fremont, CA Mayor, Hon. Lily Mei. Ms. Mei led us through some of the successes of Fremont (famous for being the home of Tesla’s first car factory). Shifting to connectivity, Ms. Mei discussed efforts for equalizing access to high-speed broadband through increased fixed infrastructure, such as optical fiber, and also increased competition from 5G networks. The key take-away is that forward-looking cities make excellent test-beds for future connectivity solutions, all while improving the situation on the ground for citizens.
The Green Planet AR Consortium then gave us a case study on how BT (and their wireless carrier subsidiary EE) partnered with Ericsson to offer a special Augmented Reality experience at Piccadilly Circus in downtown London. The experience offers people a fun alternative view on the real world when they hold their phones up and aim at certain parts of the area. This multimedia experience is undergirded by 5G networks, which provide two essential requirements:
Thanks to Tim Rawlings, BT, and Mark Seguna, Ericsson for sharing this fun use of 5G.
Also from the UK, we had a case study in using 5G to improve the user experience on public transportation. Wordnerds' CSO, Steve Erdal, and the Western Midland govt’s WM5G's Project Manager, Chris Deakin showed us an on-train communication app for passengers. This service leverage the 5G networks to provide a steady, reliable, high-speed, high-capacity network connection to trains, which could then be shared within the train over Wi-Fi. From there, a customer service app is integrated into the Wi-Fi welcome screen that is able to ask the passenger a very short series of questions about their satisfaction. This is where Wordnerds comes in: their natural language recognition is able to recognize the passengers comment, and handle it as appropriate. Integrated into the possible interactions is even the ability for passengers to signal an unsafe situation on the train, and to have officials react and board the train at the next stop. If you make public transit more responsive, safer, and more enjoyable, you’ll get more riders out of their cars, and onto trains.
In our final case, IKIN’s CEO, Joseph Ward and CTO, Taylor Scott showed us how they could deliver 3D imagery, or holograms from mobile devices, and how that feature leverages the marquee features that only a 5G network can deliver: speed and low latency.
We closed our meeting, as we often do, with a series of Rapid-Fire presentations from innovators and start-ups around the theme of Applied 5G. Ideas ranged from Edge compute to the remote driving of rental cars to deliver them to your doorstep.
Thanks to all our presenters and audience alike. We hope that many meaningful business engagements result from this very interesting meeting. The presentations are available to Members in our Library.