5G Will Breathe Life Into Machines

The rebound to in-person events, shopping, and office after being trapped indoors by the pandemic is an indication that society is still a far cry from augmented reality virtual meeting sessions romanticised by tech aficionados. Autonomous cars won’t be on the road anytime soon.

Let’s face it, for most of us a few-second lag on a Zoom meeting is acceptable and even desired if that means saving a little on the data plans. What then is the use of lightening fast internet speed or capacity that 5G promises. None, admit telecom operators.

And to be completely honest, even when the symbol at the top of your iPhone screen reads 5G, at the backend the signal is constrained by 4G or more traditional connectivity solutions, said Andy Sawyer, manager system engineering at Ericsson-owned Cradlepoint.

Cradlepoint provides LTE, 5G connectivity and edge computing solutions to enterprise users such as Amazon Web Services. Sawyer was speaking at the IoT Tech Expo Global in London. Nevertheless, 5G technology marks a tipping point for the next industrial revolution, say Verizon, BT, Cradlepoint and many others of their colleagues.

At the port when trucks arrive to load container shipments, usually it is an operator directing one truck at a time to the slot it should deposit its load. In this process there is often miscommunication and misdirection. Instead, if it drove through a connected gate which could instantaneously tell the driver where to go, port efficiencies and therefore its capacity changes dramatically. Thereafter, if there is a visual check to identify a truck turning in the wrong direction, it adds game changing precision and security at the premises.

It is with this concept in mind that Gautam Adani’s flagship enterprise made a foray into the sector buying Rs 212 crore worth of 5G telecom airwaves in August this year. With ready access to ports and large infrastructure projects, launch of such services could turn lucrative quickly for Adani. The company’s public stance is that it bought airwaves for private networks in infrastructure and industrial projects in Gujarat, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. Industry sources suggest that deployment and testing at its port in Gujarat is already on way. An email to Adani seeking an update on its deployments went unanswered.

Competing with it of course are Reliance Jio, that smashed its way into the 4G telecom market in the last decade, and Bharti Airtel that led mobile services’ entry into India. Bharti is in the midst of price negotiations with at least two large groups to launch private 5G networks, said a person familiar with the company. Jio on the other hand is expected to test its services at Reliance’s mega factory in Jamnagar to begin with. Emails to both companies went unanswered. 

“5G is the first "G" designed with industrial use in mind, so it enables customers to think about replacing wiring on shop floors and in warehouses with a highly reliable wireless network that is not going to suffer lag, or lose signal,” said Martin Garner, chief operating officer CCS Insights, the research partner for Global mobile Suppliers Association— which comprises companies like Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm. 5G private networks do not rely on 4G being present, he adds.

Jason Plent, Verizon’s partner 5G & Edge Innovation, cites the instance of a sheet rolling machine at a steel factory. If the rolling gets misaligned, at the moment a supervisor spots the fault and by the time machines are stopped to arrest the problem the roll gets loose and has to be unwound and the machine realigned, causing a loss in productivity to the tune of several thousands of dollars.

Or in a pharma packaging industry where precise printing regulations lead to material and productivity wastage when machines fall out of sync. This of course comes at a high price for the environment as well.

Verizon is setting up networks for these use cases, said Plent. In both these cases, a camera connected over 5G can be used to relay information to a central processing unit, which can help course correct the misalignment within microseconds. The camera itself need not be fixed to an ethernet cable and can be repositioned to different production lines that often come online at offset times. 

The sectors adopting private networks fastest today are manufacturing, education—to trial networks, mining, utilities, and defence, said Garner.

Perhaps, but that is not a priority. The use cases for such high speed wireless connectivity remain in areas such as autonomous cars or surfing the metaverse. Sure there are some pockets in the world such as China’s Wuhan or San Francisco in the US where driverless taxis already exist, but for the rest of the world it is still a far cry.

Where masses are likely to interact with 5G networks would be for instance in facial recognition applications at a big cricket stadium or conference. Perhaps in the not so distant future, airports may streamline passenger services via facial recognition.

With the right device ecosystem, public WiFi networks may be replaced with 5G, say experts. From the current experience, it is easier to set up a 5G network, with fewer crashes than WiFi. For instance setting up a WiFi network for a robotic filing system at a retail warehouse like Amazon’s, has been fraught with technical difficulties. If the overlap between access points is too much, it causes interference and if it is too less it leads to dark spots. If a node in the WiFi mesh goes down, it affects the connectivity across the remaining network. In either case the robot loses connectivity for a fraction of time. Now, if a package is poorly positioned on the robot’s path an accident in the window of the lapse is very likely. These, says Sawyer from Cradlepoint, will not be challenges for 5G, which will cover a much larger footprint in far fewer emitting points.

Technology specialists are, however, focusing on industrial use of 5G over retail. Garner said, “The upcoming releases 17 and 18 of the 5G standard, due for commercialisation during the next two to three years, will add functionality that will further enhance industrial use cases.” Improved high reliability radio links, increasingly accurate location and tracking of devices, small data transmission to enable longer device battery life, and using AI to optimise the network to consume less power are some of the additions in the two new releases.

The big question then is, why partner large operators rather than privately building 5G networks? Companies across India have wisened up and the telecom regulator has received applications to permit launch of private networks on their facilities. Even as Indian operators battle to restrict this, in the developed market Sam Sahil, head of a newly carved 5G Proposition and Commercial arm at BT, said it was a matter of pure expertise.

For starters, operators know networks better and can maintain them more seamlessly. Sahil added that in order to connect this network with business logic or edge computing data centres, networks would need to depend on conventional networks—such as an optic fibre backend to connect with processing units. Operators are also beginning to enter into tie-ups with enterprise software companies like Microsoft, so companies signing up for these networks will be able to leverage entire solutions which will hit the ground running.

Lastly, Sahil said this was about future proofing. While a private network may cover one port or facility, eventually companies will need to connect multiple facilities. A telecom operator will be able to deliver such a network and scale it up as a service, keeping in line with cutting-edge technology, which enterprises will find may be too capital intensive.

Deepali Gupta is a London-based senior business journalist and the author of `'Tata Vs Mistry: The Battle for India's Greatest Business Empire’.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.