5G, the network of networks? Facts, theses and scenarios
What does it mean to control 5G? It is from the answer to that question that the debate is directed in myriad directions. First episode of an in- depth study by Ottavio Carparelli, former senior manager in the telecommunications sector, now a consultant in corporate strategy
I have already had the opportunity to say here on Start Magazine that 5G technology is a technology that should favor the social and structural transformations that we will see in the coming years, but I also said that 5G will not be the main actor of these transformations: other technologies , artificial intelligence and augmented reality, for example, will probably drive the transformations of society more directly. It is not a matter of priority or superiority between completely different technologies, serving different purposes, it is simply a matter of positioning.
Social changes will be driven by how the connecting fabric (5G) is used, the fabric itself is there to support new usage patterns, not to guide them. But then why so many people (political parties, governments, military alliances, ecological associations, health organizations, conspirators and universal conspiracy theorists; … probably also the tenants' association of via Galatola 326) are fighting and debating about 5G? Nobody remembers such a debate around 2G (CDMA in America, GSM in Europe / Oceania) that although, perhaps unique among mobile communication technologies, it changed society on its own (or at least in direct collaboration with Nokia, Motorola and some other manufacturers. of mobile phones).
So why such a debate around 5G? By choice and incompetence I avoid entering into debates related to health, energy consumption and the bell tower of via Galatola 326 which does not want the antenna on the top, and, obviously, I do not enter into discussions on occult powers. There are also many parallel debates related to 5G, more or less connected to each other. Just making a list of the issues that generate discussions and positions is a titanic undertaking.
I apologize in advance to all the experts and authorities on the subject for the lacunae and extreme simplification that I am forced to make, but it seems to me necessary to first illustrate the point of origin of the technical / political / economic debate around 5G. In a way, the “5G fundamentalists” see the 5G network as Tolkien's ring, the one who is the head of all the other rings, the network of networks.
I try to explain myself. Today we are used to having and using many communication networks (sometimes without realizing it), sometimes we use WiFi connections or wired internet from home, sometimes we use WiFi with the computer in public places (that Wi-Fi is a bit different from home, even if we don't really care), we obviously use cellular networks, and then there are the networks used by communicating objects that are quite different (more on that later).
5G hardliners argue that once fully completed, 5G can replace all networks, it would have the capacity. So here is the theoretical node: who controls 5G controls all communications on earth (excluding perhaps, but it could be argued, only communications via satellite and face-to-face or mask-to-mask); it is this somewhat dystopian aspect that generates discussions, apprehensions, economic strategies; political choices and so on.
We begin to deal with this theoretical node in its technical aspect. But is it true that 5G can replace all networks?
The theory says yes, but there are a lot of problems with this extreme simplification. The complete and theoretical 5G will see (if it ever does) the light in the far enough future, and perhaps it will already be replaced in many places by a 6G, before being truly available everywhere with all its theoretical features (the technical work of defining 6G has already begun, we are not talking in the abstract).
The 5G that is being put on the antenna today is really far from the ultimate vision of 5G.
To be concrete, let's talk, in the simplest way possible, of 4 technical elements. First of all let's talk about the classic speed (or transfer capacity); is what is measured in bits (mega bits, giga bits, etc.) per second. More speed allows you to transfer more data, with the various generations of the network we have gone from voice, to photos, to video and now to high definition video maybe sent continuously (this video sent continuously is a fascinating topic in itself, perhaps we'll be back in other articles here on Start Magazine ). The 5G that is being put in place today allows for progress but not a huge leap.
For example, Start Magazine has already published an article discussing the transfer capacity problems encountered on early 5G networks, especially in the West. The results show that on the terminal (on the mobile phone) 5G is barely faster than the 4G network; things are a little better in Asia, where we have chosen to use frequencies never used before more quickly (which generates other apprehensions that I prefer not to comment on), but we are still at the dawn of the announced future. It will take a period of adjustment before reaching speeds close to those promised, and, for now, as already commented on Start Magazine , the new 5G terminals (the new iPhone 12 just announced, just to name one), can turn out to be cars racing on a city street, so the adoption of the new 5G terminal could also be a bit slower than the first predictions (although it can be expected that Apple, Huawei, Samsung etc. will do everything to convince us to switch to new models).
The second very important technical element is the response time between the terminal and the network, which is a different form of speed; the response time is independent of the amount of data transmitted, and can be fast or slow even for small amounts of data, but it is very important for new applications. Let's think for a moment in terms of augmented or virtual reality, it is necessary that the time that elapses between a gesture and the result of that gesture is at least as short as what happens in the real world. In short, if we open a virtual door with a gesture, the door must open immediately and not after a “download” message. In fact, many of the control applications (autonomous cars, central controls, remote medicine, etc.), try to achieve much better response times than humans. From a technical point of view we try to arrive at response times of the 5G network of the order of a thousandth of a second, for now, in the 5G networks in the field, we are on the side of the cents, it is spectacular for certain applications, but it is a lot ( too), for several transformative applications.
The third element is that of coexistence with WiFi. WiFi is widespread in closed environments (factories, homes, places of visit and entertainment, and so on), the migration from WiFi to 5G would still take a long time; but there is another aspect, to date, WiFi 6 allows better signal coverage than 5G in many closed environments, with comparable speeds, which suggests a complementarity between the 2 technologies, and not an alternative, at least for several years to come (I would like to point out for the sake of completeness that many WiFi 6 fundamentalists have said over and over again that 5G is a waste of money, you could do everything with WiFi 6 … honestly I think they are wrong too, and we should be able to forget ourselves of them pretty quickly…).
To finish the technical discussion, let's talk about the Internet of Things. Many communicating objects today use special communication technologies, with lesser known names to the public such as Zigbee, LoRa, Sigfox, and so on. These technologies have been specifically designed to require very little energy use, which allows you to create objects (sensors) that can be placed in places where it is not possible to recharge the batteries (sensors on the body, sensors in agricultural areas, sensors on or in animals. , sensors in mountain or seismic areas, and so on). One day, 5G may replace them, but we're not there yet, and maybe it will never happen 100%. The first 5G objects are not low-cost sensors, to be placed in a non-electrified tomato field, but mobile phones capable of sending high-quality video, and which must be recharged daily. Furthermore, the frequencies that are being used today do not allow low-energy transmissions. So, for several years, we should continue to see meters and sensors that don't use 5G.
In short, at the end of the discussion, I think I tried to explain that the fact that in the near future "everything" will pass away 5G may not be true. But it must be conceded that a very large part of terrestrial communication will go through 5G; therefore the theoretical node "who controls 5G controls everything" is still a node that is worth debating. Perhaps, the heart of the debate can be identified with the question: what does it mean to control 5G? And it is from the answer to that question that the debate is directed in myriad directions. We will talk about it in the next episodes.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/5g-la-rete-delle-reti-fatti-tesi-e-scenari/ on Sat, 17 Oct 2020 06:28:25 +0000.