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5G is here, so where is this future we were promised?

Are we impatient here at Hypertext? Well, if you were to sum up all the variables, take into account the fact that the Sun sets in the East, then yes, we are an impatient bunch.

In our defense, there is a lot of fantastic stuff that happens in the tech world and sometimes, seemingly boring and mundane things can be exciting. Case in point is 5G.

The next generation of mobile broadband and telephony has promised a number of new features that have us excited.

As you are no doubt aware if you are a regular reader of Hypertext, 5G promises three core improvements on LTE and other connectivity standards.

These are:

  • Increased capacity
  • Lower latency
  • Improved connectivity

These improvements are core to 5G and one would assume that once 5G was available, you’d see the impact of these improvements immediately.

But this isn’t the case.

It’s best to think of 5G as a blank freeway. Regular traffic flows through faster than it would on an arterial road but if you want to get the most out of it, you need to hone the solution to meet your needs.

And this is why you may not be reaping the benefits of 5G just yet despite several local launches.

“The challenge for operators is not simply to think of new ways to charge for different services. It lies in creating a network that can be tailored or ‘sliced’ to meet the needs of specific use cases, services, applications and customers. Enter 5G network slicing, where communication service providers can split the physical network into multiple, virtual networks – much like having a pedestrian walkway, a cycle lane, a regular lane and a high-occupancy toll lane all on the one highway,” explains sales director for Amdocs South Africa, Ockert Oosthuizen.

Network slicing is possible because 5G can be programmed and this has the added benefit of being able to assign capacity, connectivity and speed to individual slices of a network.

For example, one slice could be reserved for mission critical applications, another slice could be used for high-bandwidth applications another could be assigned to streaming duty insuring that customers can watch Netflix at the highest resolution without buffering.

But as you might expect, this is dependent on networks slicing their 5G infrastructure. However, this would be in the best interest of the network operator as it diversifies the product offering.

“This allows network operators to offer varying levels of services, or slices, to enterprises and other users. These services can be based on any combination of performance characteristics such as quality of service, capacity, latency, volume of users, location, security level or time of the day, among others,” Oosthuizen explains.

So then why aren’t we seeing this in South Africa given that 5G is now here?

While 5G has been launched by rain, Vodacom and MTN, these rollouts have been incredibly limited. The availability of the tech is limited to very small footprints in major metropolitan areas which means that 5G is still in its infancy in South Africa.

We should also point out that much of the spectrum that is being used for 5G was assigned on a temporary basis so investing something such as network slicing is silly given your spectrum may disappear.

But more than that there needs to be demand for 5G and not just from a connectivity stand point.

Enterprise, SMEs and even the public sector should be looking at what 5G enables and considering how that can be applied in a South African context.

Demand is key and if we want to see 5G being fully taken advantage of then we should all be exploring how the tech can be used.

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