Insiders and enthusiasts continue to buzz about the 5G future. But you don’t have to wait

for 5G to get better wireless performance and happier mobile customers.

• How 5G will enable an era of greater connectivity, scaled for a broadening scope of intelligent communications technology;
• Why it’s important for network operators to continue building towards better performance for all their wireless networks now;
• What you can do to pursue intelligent connectivity goals in the present network landscape.

A great mobile connection makes customers happy. But it's no longer just desired. It's expected.

FIVE BENEFITS 5G WILL BRING

Excitement. Expectation. Anxiety. The discussion around 5G continues to evolve. One thing that's certain: the connectivity technologies we’ve dreamed of over the past decade will be catalyzed or quashed by the reality of what 5G can deliver. 

While healthy skepticism is useful when assessing the expected outcomes of any forthcoming technology, below are five benefits of 5G I believe you should be excited about as a wireless operator or content provider, or just as a wireless consumer yourself looking forward to a 5G world.

5G will be faster. It will simply offer greater throughput for every 5G connection. This doesn’t just mean webpages will load quicker. It means video calls, VoIP, and streaming will occur at much higher quality baselines than they do currently. The added clarity will improve the nuance we’re able to project and interpret through digital mediums, not to mention higher performance for mobile online gaming.

5G will improve reliability. Expect to see less fluctuation in network coverage and quality as you move from place to place. Also included in the 5G standard is a requirement for seamless transitions between networks. This means the handoff between Wi-Fi and cellular should rarely if ever be perceived by the end user, even during streaming and video calling sessions.

5G will be scalable to support the fast-growing number of connected devices. Not only is the number of individual mobile customers with smartphones growing, the number of devices each customer connects is growingas well. At the same time, Internet of Things technologies are reaching maturity, and will start demanding more and more sizable chunks of the network pie. 5G technology is designed to scale for the massive number of connections we’re expecting to see, bringing much-needed relief to congested network environments,

5G will enrich our immersion in virtual worlds. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of virtual and augmented reality. Those applications are limited by the connection quality and consistency they demand. 5G will bring high-definition virtual reality to mobile customers on a level we’ve only begun to imagine. This will forge new entertainment markets, and power hyper-contextual education and training applications that should accelerate and deepen our ability to learn in controlled, interactive ways.

5G will help us get more out of our robotics and automated transportation. With the extremely low latency of 5G networks, operators controlling remote robots will be able to view high definition camera and sensor feeds and make precise adjustments in real time. This will also help smart vehicles and public transit systems make better automated decisions with broader and more accurate knowledge coming in at a much higher rate than currently attainable.

There's no doubt about it: 5G will bring us unprecedented convenience and capability.

The doors that will open in a fully realized 5G world will lead to exciting new places, and help us exceed some of the perceived plateaus we’ve reached in various wireless services and product lines. But…

BUT WHY WAIT FOR 5G?

While the impact of 5G will be comprehensive and deep, there is no reason—as an operator, or as a builder of technologies that interface with wireless networks—to put off seeking better performance.

In fact, there is every reason to do the opposite. Verizon is projecting over 30 cities in America will debut 5G in 2019. The US Geological Survey reported, as of 2013, that there are around 38,000 towns and cities in America. While the technology is falling into place, the roll-out of 5G is expected to be a lengthy process, even when limited to U.S. markets.

Being proactive about improving service now will only help businesses carry a greater lead into the post-5G race. 5G capabilities will eventually permeate cities and consumer smartphones, but that eventuality won’t eclipse the progress these businesses make in the meantime.

There are plenty of pain-points for customers and operators alike that are only getting worse, and could use an interim solution.

 Crowded cities mean congested networks. And the slowdown is only getting worse.

You may recognize some of these connectivity frustrations:

• Mobile customers demand faster wireless connections year by year, even as the apps and content-mediums they access become more complex and data-hungry.
• Congestion of wireless networks increases as global populations grow and continue to urbanize, resulting in slowdown, especially for the networks prioritized by most user devices.
• This congestion is worsened by connectivity technologies saturating more and more devices beyond standard smartphones, and as IoT networks begin to turn on.
• Transferring between networks frequently results in wireless drops, slow streaming, interrupted voice calls, and overall bad experiences that leave lasting negative impressions on mobile customers.
• The advance of technologies like VR and AR are slowed by the limitations of existing network environments, which aren’t reliable enough to maintain constant connections on the move.
• The lack of reliable and persistent connectivity for devices in motion also impacts development and implementation of new robotics, connected cars, security solutions, and connected healthcare devices, all of which benefit greatly from uninterrupted network access.
• The limited analytics provided by 4G and 3G network deployments makes it difficult to see how connections are experienced by the edge device—meaning handsets held by mobile customers, IoT devices, and other user endpoints—which makes network deficiencies and degraded performance that much harder to address.

Solving or easing any of these pain-points before 5G comes into the picture will be how opportunistic companies win swathes of new customers. It will also help them keep the customers they already have, and impress potential business partners.

But how realistic is it that businesses will be able to implement high-grade solutions to these problems in a timely fashion, and accrue the ROI they’re looking for?

Not only is it realistic, I believe it’s relatively simple.

INTELLIGENT CONNECTIVITY TODAY

If you follow wireless technology news or social media, you're probably used to endless parades of prototypes and prognostications for the future. What you don't always see are connectivity products that deliver immediate value today, as well as better performance going forward.

That's exactly what the flagship product of Carnegie Mobility Solutions is. Our Network Convergence Platform (NCP), is a suite of software-only technologies that installs on the edge device and delivers 5G-comparable wireless connections—without the need for 5G enablement or infrastructure.

By leveraging intelligent network convergence, the NCP software suite enables operators and content providers to provide better mobile experiences at lower cost, with immediate ROI.

What NCP does:

• Improves connection speed by combining throughput from multiple networks. This results in higher quality for customers running high-def streaming, voice and video calling over internet protocol, gaming, and AR or VR apps.
• Raises reliability, especially in crowded network environments where mobile devices can make bad connection choices that result in drops and unstable or low-quality connections.
• Relieves network congestion by empowering edge devices to make intelligent decisions about what network to connect to, including cognizance and avoidance of overloaded networks.
• Makes the transition between cellular and Wi-Fi networks completely gapless. This means customers avoid disconnected video calls and slow streaming as a result of crossing between networks. It also enables higher performance for connected vehicles and on-the-move applications.
• Delivers analytics from the edge device, revealing how each device interacts with all the networks it sees, drilling down to individual app performance and providing actionable data on network issues.

5G promises to bring many of the benefits NCP does. But what a product like NCP proves is there’s no reason to wait for 5G to deliver intelligent connectivity.

NCP is already running and producing value in trial and full-scale deployments for global operators. Here’s a video explanation of how the NCP product can work in everyday network environments.

Watch the above video for an in-depth explanation on how NCP accomplishes a lot of the promises of 5G with a software-only solution. 

NCP provides 5G benefits on existing networks without upgrades to mobile infrastructure or customer handsets. It gives operators and content providers the opportunity to upgrade service and deliver better mobile experiences today, at a much lower cost than even a limited 5G deployment, in one easy installment. 

I’m excited to see how the tech world and our everyday experiences are revolutionized over the coming years with the enablement of 5G technology. In the meantime, I believe NCP represents a great chance to take a competitive lead in your market by delivering the best mobile experiences customers can find.

Learn more about our product and what it offers at www.carnegieNCP.com.