The personal use of 5G has been a much-explored topic in recent years, as has the unsteady pace of 5G rollout in the United States. But despite stumbling blocks, even businesses (both big and small) are dipping their toes in the world of 5G connectivity to experiment with new business models.
In fact, some experts believe 5G has a lot more potential to benefit businesses rather than everyday consumers. “If you were to ask a random person about how 5G has impacted them, they are most likely to tell you that their battery does not last as long!” says Allen Proithis, CEO of Capstone Partners, a company providing 5G applications to the US Department of Defense among other organizations. “5G today is a bit like the internet twenty years ago,” he adds. “At the time, the internet seemed like it would be a big thing, but no one quite understood how to fully use it as a business tool.”
5G in operations
The increasing pace of the 5G rollout has some obvious benefits for businesses at all stages of growth, experts say. “5G technology offers a tremendous opportunity to transform, particularly in three areas: Operations, employee experience, and customer experience.,” Daniel Hays, principal at PwC, told Digital Trends.
Considering the advantage of 5G in the field of operations, Hays says, “5G can provide a path for improving operational performance and cost, thanks to the increased connectivity, faster speeds, and lower latency that it provides. This can, in turn, be applied to intelligence and automation for routine tasks. That includes factory and warehouse automation, or perhaps intelligently monitoring traffic flow for major cities and big events.”
Another example is with healthcare, which is seeing a great impact from the adoption of 5G. “The more efficient connection allows for collaboration between doctors and first responders that can end up saving lives,” says Nick Cherukuri, founder and CEO of ThirdEye Gen, an Augmented/Mixed Reality company that uses 5G to connect field operators and first responders to those back at the base.
5G and Augmented Reality in boosting employee efficiency
Beyond operations, 5G also benefits employees, experts say. “5G technology can boost employee performance, efficiency, and safety,” according to Hays. Proithis agrees, saying high data speeds and low latency enable a class of AR applications that can significantly reduce employee training time while increasing the quality of knowledge transfer. He points to the example of “companies like Taqtile (a Capstone technology partner) [that] have created a class of AR tools that easily allows anyone to capture the data around how to execute a task.”
Experts believe 5G has the potential to bring small and mid-sized businesses to a level playing field.
