THE LONG-TAIL FOR ENTERPRISES

Here’s why getting curious about 5G makes sense for enterprise-scale users, and why they should take care of the known unknown

- SHUBHENDU PARTH & PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

There’s the bullock and then there’s the horse. Then we have the bicycle, the car, the Model T, and V8. And then, there’s Hyperloop. Yes. There is 2G. Then there’s 3G and 4G. And now there’s 5G.

But none of the predecessors of 5G stirred up as much excitement and as many growth projections as this form of G has. This stripe of G is not just another step. It is being seen as something that will make enterprises swing to a new world altogether. It is expected to be a big inflection point and more than just another standard.

To quote Cisco India and SAARC Service Provider Business Managing Director Anand Bhaskar, if 4G was all about feeds and speeds, 5G will be all about experiences and, hence, will have far greater transformative effects. According to him, “5G is not just an incremental improvement over existing Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 4G.”

It is going to be bigger and unprecedented for one more reason – Industry 4.0. That’s what will make it step into factories and remote plants and new enterprise-grade applications like never before.

So let us understand that part first before we confront some not-so-exciting realities around this big wave.

Speed for upstream folks

If we ask CIOs, they share some of this excitement, but in a user-centric way, adequately flanked with pragmatic questions. When asked if 5G is just a new-fangled technology looking for problem-areas to solve, GSK’s Global Application and Development Tech Director Ashish Bansal shares his personal opinion, “5G New Radio interface and access technology with lower latency and higher capacity can definitely help improve patient and hospital applications, medical data management, and medical assistance for the healthcare industry.”