5G for Location Intelligence: Operators have to “secure a large number of sites to locate their new 5G RF equipment.”

By B.N. Frank

Opposition to 5G deployment is worldwide. Cities AND entire countries have been taking action to ban, delay, halt, and limit installation AS WELL AS issue moratoriums. Since 2017, doctors and scientists have been asking for moratoriums on Earth and in space (see 1, 2). The majority of scientists oppose deployment. Research continues to be published that there are significant and potentially catastrophic cybersecurity, biological, and environmental risks associated with this technology (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

Where 5G hasn’t been banned or delayed, it continues to be installed near homes, schools, pretty much everywhere. While proponents are still big fans of this, it’s always entertaining when they point out flagrant 5G disadvantages like exorbitant costs, fast battery drainage, densified installation, and other “significant risks”.

From Fierce Wireless:

Living At The Edge: Unlocking The Full Potential of 5G MEC With Location Intelligence

In no generation of mobile technology has location intelligence been more critical or precise than in 5G, and in no business is it more critical than one that is inherently mobile. Consumers, enterprises and governments will benefit greatly as 5G networks and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) capabilities get deployed over the next decade.

Together, 5G and MEC promise unprecedented levels of compute and network performance required to serve even the most demanding applications with high bandwidth and ultra-low latency.

Reaching the transformative potential of these technologies will require the help of location intelligence, from building out the infrastructure to enabling a new generation of use cases across industries in both enterprise and consumer.

5G MEC: Powering the Autonomous Services of the Future

The importance of fast and reliable connectivity has never been more evident than during the global COVID-19 pandemic. With people confined to their homes, communications networks helped them stay connected and employed while giving businesses continued access to the digital infrastructure they needed to weather the crisis.

At the same time, modern network technologies also hold the key to global recovery. In the post-pandemic era, nearly all industries will seek to accelerate their efforts to automate, digitize and enhance their capability to operate remotely. For this, the continued advance of 5G, presently still in the early stages of a multiyear buildout, is critical.

5G networks enable faster access to mobile devices, with average speeds up to 40 times faster than 4G/LTE. They are expected to reduce network latency from the 20-30 millisecond range (typical of 4G/LTE networks) to below 10 milliseconds.

Building, operating and leveraging this new infrastructure has enormous potential. Arthur D. Little anticipates some $1.5 trillion of 5G-enabled revenue is up for grabs between now and 2030. An IHS Markit study forecasts $13.2 trillion in global economic value from 5G use cases will be made possible by 2035, generating 22.3 million jobs in the 5G global value chain alone.

There are, however, unique deployment challenges involved when planning and building 5G mobile networks. While 5G millimeter-wave signals support very high connection speeds, they can only propagate for approximately 200-250 meters before signal regeneration is required. Also, signals are unable to penetrate solid objects such as walls, buildings, billboards, and even tree foliage in the way 4G signals could.

Further, 5G networks are more expensive than their 4G predecessors. Expenditures include high spectrum costs – more than 2.5X the cost of RF equipment – plus an additional four to 10 times the number of small cell sites than 4G networks.

Still, traditional Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) will be aggressively vying for a slice of that multitrillion-dollar 5G market share, along with smaller-scale “micro operators,” tower companies, network equipment vendors, system integrators, cloud providers and application developers from various industries.

MEC technology, which brings cloud computing to the edge of the mobile network, is gaining recognition as a key component for the networks of the future. When combined with 5G, MEC promises unprecedented levels of compute and network performance, with high bandwidth data transfers and ultra-low-latency connections – the kind of connectivity that can power the autonomous services of the future.

Moving compute, storage and processing resources from a centralized cloud to the network edge is a tantalizing prospect for 5G use cases. Networks will better handle surges in data traffic and applications that require low-latency traffic can be located physically closer to customers. This reduces transfer costs and the load on central data centers while improving and guaranteeing performance.

Once deployed, these network technologies open up new horizons for consumers, businesses and governments. Among the major benefits are improved positioning accuracy and latency, which in turn enables a host of new edge services. Autonomous vehicles, first responders and drones will be able to attain real-time positioning and situational awareness. Immersive Augmented Reality user interfaces will use high-resolution location data to overlay computer-generated imagery on the world and enhance mobile experiences as well as enable deeper user engagement, richer services and novel advertising models. Gaming studios and brands will have the ability to add rich location context to business data to deliver hyper-personalized experiences for users and consumers.

Commercial success, however, is far from assured. 5G MEC requires high upfront investment and comes with significant risks. Cloud processing and storage capabilities will need to be deployed closer to where the consumers, workers, cars, robots and industries of tomorrow will be.

The question is, where will they be?

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Sounds like 5G is more trouble (and more expensive) than its worth, doesn’t it?

American opposition to 5G deployment is only increasing due to concerns about reduced property value (see 1, 2, 3) and increased energy consumption (see 1, 2) as well as risks to cybersecurity, privacy (see 1, 2), public safety (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), health (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. 10), and the environment.

In February 2019, telecom executives gave U.S. congressional testimony that they had NO independent scientific evidence that 5G is safe. In December 2019, then presidential candidate, Joe Biden said that 5G should be “studied thoroughly” before it was deployed. So far, now President Biden seems to only support the deployment of additional unsafe wireless technology. Boo. Hiss!

Last month, scientists submitted a letter to President Biden asking him to protect the public from 5G and other unsafe technology. Americans opposed to 5G may click here to sign a letter asking the Biden administration to stop deployment immediately.