Fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications has the potential to be a significant catalyst for the Internet of Things (IoT), as long as the hurdles limiting its uptake and its perceptions are overcome, says IoT Industry Council of South Africa (IOTIC) executive member Roger Hislop.

One of the key markets influenced by the evolution of 5G is IoT and this market segment is expected to grow to 49-million 5G IoT endpoints installed worldwide by 2023.

“The two technologies offer the industry the perfect storm of speed, connectivity and control, transforming the potential of IoT and the capabilities of the technology that leverages IoT across industry and sector,” he says.

Further, 5G is currently considered the most advanced mobile broadband technology standard and is expected to achieve three-billion subscriptions by 2025 at a growth of 600-million subscriptions from 2023 to 2024.

Automation and instrumentation use cases, especially, are suitable for retrofitting IoT capability with wireless devices, and represent the use cases in which 5G will provide significant benefits. However, this will only happen if mobile operators prioritise IoT-centric services "over headline-grabbing science fiction features", emphasises Hislop.

“If it delivers as promised, 5G will be a massive catalyst for IoT. At its heart, IoT is small, low-power devices connected over a radio network to the Cloud to provide organisations with real-world, real-time visibility into their people, processes and things. A reliable, low-cost radio network that is pervasive over the entire country is key to 5G making a real impact on IoT,” he says.

“We already have networks like Sigfox and LoRaWAN, and old second-generation technology still does the job; however, their limitations are quite severe. Therefore, a new for-purpose connectivity option with pervasive national coverage would be invaluable.”

For example, the evolution of Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT), which is part of the long-term evolution standard, was supposed to provide higher bandwidth, real-time use cases in IoT, but it has only slowly delivered on its promise owing to a slow and spotty rollout.

"Third-generation (3G) and fourth-generation (4G) networks have issues with resource management, namely providing an acceptable quality of service to voice, data and video users, alongside low-bandwidth, but mission-critical IoT users.

“Overall, 5G is designed to fix these problems, but the challenge is for mobile operators to change their business models to make their IoT-centric technologies more cost-competitive and to introduce IoT-friendly service offerings,” Hislop says.

“Moving forward, mobile operators need to move away from their baked-into-their-DNA compulsion to burn their customers with costs like SIM fees and minimum billing increments, and to focus rather on growth and connectivity solutions that are cost inclusive and capable,” he suggests.

“The IOTIC actively encourages local mobile operators to cultivate IoT-centric services for 5G because the technology provides genuine use cases that deliver genuine value to business and local government that far outstrips the glamorous hype of holographic videos and self-driving cars.”

Further, while much of the promise behind 5G remains speculative, so are the industries that will supposedly benefit from it. Self-driving cars directed remotely are not going to be a reality any time soon. "These kinds of use cases would rely on an infinitely pervasive, infinitely reliable mobile connection, which stretches the bounds of likelihood," Hislop states.

However, day-to-day benefits for most users are more mundane. Internet service providers can use it to offer higher-performance fixed wireless services.

“There are plenty of benefits to 5G, including higher bandwidth, better latency, more concurrent sessions and greater control of network resources, but how this will translate into the better user benefits touted by the industry cheerleaders remains debatable,” he highlights.

“Many of the use cases are speculative, even fanciful, and right on the edge of severe over-hype. 5G is an evolution of existing mobile standards, not magic, and does need to overcome three clear disadvantages before it can achieve its full potential,” Hislop emphasises.

Specifically, the disadvantages are cost, power and range. A 5G network is incredibly expensive to build, and the hype that is accompanying it is driven by companies wanting to recoup their investments or secure government support. The base stations for 5G use more power than 3G and 4G, which adds to cost and complexity of rollout. Current handsets rapidly use battery power until radios can be optimised, he details.

From a range perspective, operators will need to use higher carrier frequencies to achieve the promised performance, as 5G will only perform to the levels promised well north of 3 Ghz. Additionally, as frequency increases, penetration decreases so operators will have to invest in small-cell base stations every few hundred metres as opposed to one base station every 3 km to 5 km.

“To see genuine, high-performance 5G benefits, there is going to have to be a tonne of civils built for a tonne of base stations for a very long time. The blistering, multi-gigabit, sub-millisecond latency trials used to promote 5G come from the lab, and will not be experienced in the real world,” says Hislop.

“It is also important to consider that 5G is a public, shared radio network and users are relying on third-party operators to keep them connected and secure – so there is still a strong case for private radio and especially higher-speed, highly reliable fibre networks.”