How 5G might enable virtual reality and augmented reality

What services will drive the 5G network? When we look at 5G, we can imagine how a new class of services with current unmet performance requirements can be enabled. For example, new enterprise or healthcare services based on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) could become an important technology advancement that offers new ways to treat patients and new ways to do business remotely.

Today you can already imagine games based on VR/AR, and indeed some industry applications where you need to operate in hostile or unhealthy environments, like e.g coal mining. However, the advent of 5G will enable Machine to Machine and IoT connectivity in ways that perhaps as yet, we cannot imagine.

Technologies disrupt the market

Dez Blanchfield, Technology Thought Leader and Geoff Hollingworth, Head of Global Digital Marketing discuss, how different technologies have disrupted the market in the past, e.g during the shift to internet and the mobile dotcom boom, where the SIM-card has played important but different roles during its life time. From being just an identifier of a person when the assumption was that not everyone will be able to have their own mobile, to the role of the SIM-card today carrying programmable memory, identity and personal profile that can build a platform.

"The interesting thing humans have problem with, is that they believe the world is done with what they can see, and we know that is never true. In 2007 the Nokia CEO was on the front page of Forbes saying that billions of phones plus, unbeatable, what can happen? And then of course Apple and Android came along, and then we realized that what we needed was something completely different" says Geoff Hollingworth.

Geoff continues: "Observation number two is that when you are building something, you don´t quite know why you are building it, and you might get surprised. So if we build a platform for VR/AR, it is really not for us to decide what it will be used for."

Dez also mention the Pokémon Go example, that we did not expect, and asks where we will be in the coming 18 months.

It is all about data and trust

Everything is about data, how it is generated and how it is going to be used. The other question is about who will own the data, and how will you build trust that the data is taken care of in your best interest. To build a digital network in a digital society—is fully reliant on trust and how you can build it into the infrastructure. If you build trust, services will go commercial, people can invest and grow and feel secure that it is handled in a good way.

Watch the video with Dez blanchfield and Geoff Hollingworth:

Here you can read more about how to build 5G networks.

Dez Blanchfield: Analyst / Consultant / Data Scientist / Investor

As an Industry Analyst, Business & Technology Consultant, and Data Scientist covering rapid growth markets such as Digital Transformation, Digital Disruption, Telecommunications, Mobile, Cloud, Big Data & Analytics, Internet of Things, Machine 2 Machine, Cyber Security, Cyber Risk & Resilience & Smart Cities. Dez has invested his professional career of some two and a half decades thinking out and influencing the development roadmaps of technology companies, aligning them to the customer experience demands and possibilities of forward thinking digital enterprises.

Dez is also an avid social media user and has a series of podcasts which we produces with leaders from different industries. This is a new series we have launched with @ericssondigital called “Transmissions from Tomorrow”. You can follow Dez Blanchfield on Twitter and LinkedIn to learn more about his industry insights.