If you’ve started your own business in the past 15 years it goes without saying that technology is at the heart of everything you do, whether you’re aware of it or not. There was a time when the telephone was the peak of small business communications technology. An advert in the local paper was all that was needed as far as marketing was concerned. But the increasing shift towards digital consumption means that we’re not just engaging more and more with our customers and prospective leads through digital means, digital technologies are likely an intrinsic part of our processes and practices. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a business landscape without digital communications technology today. Even if your business stems from a time honored craft such as carpentry there’s a good chance that you make some use of digital technologies to promote your business and products, manage customer relationships, field queries from customers, make your blog posts and content marketing more effective and communicate with your employees and outsourced service providers.
While we’re all dependent upon technology to some extent both in our professional and our personal lives, technology is not known for standing still. In fact, technology abhors inertia and lives in a constant state of both evolution and revolution. Just look at the field of consumer electronics. How many iPhones have you bought in the past 10 years? How often have you changed your TV to achieve the most dazzling resolution possible on which to watch your favorite movies and TV shows. But of course technology is about more than improving the resolution in which we can watch television. It’s also about making our business processes faster, more secure and more intuitive, guiding both productivity and efficiency. While there are a great many technologies which can either impede or propel your business’ productivity, one of the most glaringly obvious is internet technology. With the advent of 5G internet just around the corner, it’s time to talk about how adopting 5G could benefit your business.
What is 5G?
If you are familiar with mobile internet you’ve likely noticed the evolution of its speed and reliability as mobile phone networks have incorporated 2G, 3G and eventually 4G into their services. As one might expect, 5G is the natural evolution of mobile internet. This blog post has more detailed information but in brief, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently accelerated the investment in and deployment of 5G internet with AT&T the first carrier to roll it out. The basic specifications are as follows;
- An end-to-end latency of 1 millisecond or less
- Data speeds of 1 to 10GB per second
- 10-100 devices connected over the network at a given time
- 100% Network coverage
- Energy usage reduction of over 90 percent
- Up to 10 years’ battery life for machine-type devices
- 99.99% availability
You don’t need to be a tech geek to get that this bodes well for the future of digital communications with these impressive sounding stats. But what does this advance mean for you and your business? Well, here are just some of the ways in which your enterprise may benefit from embracing 5G…
It could encourage innovation.
5G internet widens the bottleneck for what businesses can accomplish in their digital communications. Technological advances have a way of encouraging creatives to find new solutions to age old problems outside of the parameters of what was previously thought possible. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council CEO Karen Kerrigan spoke in support of the FCC’s vote to accelerate investment in 5G with the following:
“The FCC’s bold action will accelerate the availability of 5G technology, which means our economy and businesses will be more innovative, resilient and competitive.”
As businesses harness the power of 5G to come up with increasingly bold and imaginative solutions to the problems they and their customers encounter, their competitors are likely to take notice and follow suit. This will lead to more widespread innovation which in turn will further drive competition which can only benefit the economy in a time of widespread industrial change. The world of VR, for example, has already been harnessed by some businesses for employee training and orientation or to create immersive experiences for their customers. Through 5G holographic projection, business customers and employees could theoretically view 3D video without needing 3D glasses. This could potentially allow for dynamic 3D presentations and breathtaking customer demonstrations.
Save money
Any business of any size understands the fine balancing act between investing sufficiently in infrastructure and growth while keeping overhead costs manageable to facilitate easy cash flow. Thus, most businesses embrace opportunities to cut down on the essentials like power, fuel and communications. It’s just one of the reasons why so many businesses turn to VoIP for their telephone communications. With an energy use reduction of over 90% (facilitated by the use of millimeter wave technology) and the potential for enhanced battery life, it’s clear to see how businesses for whom digital communication is at the forefront of their operation could stand to make substantial savings on their energy costs.
Enhanced productivity
5G will support up to a million wireless connections per square kilometer transmitting significantly more units of data per second. This means that businesses can have more wirelessly connected autonomous units or workstations uploading, downloading and communicating with one another faster than ever. In fact, 5G has the potential to reach 10 times the speed of even the fastest of today’s networks. It’s clear to see how this can benefit productivity and cut down lead times.
Expanding Internet Of Things Capability
While the human element will always be an essential part of the way in which we do business, any opportunity to reduce the pressure on your employees through better automation should be embraced. The Internet of Things has been invaluable to businesses looking for smart ways to automate their processes in a way that’s sympatico with their information systems. 5G will allow for faster and more diffuse communication between internet enabled devices, leading to more reliable and efficient process automation.
Whatever the nature of your business, there’s a good chance that the advent of 5G could be a colossal boon for you and your enterprise!
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