In 2020, the deployment of 5G technology gained momentum on the global stage. Although it had been consolidated in some regions, a large number of countries have recently begun to move beyond the pilot testing phase, transitioning to the business model.
All of the technology generation changeovers (2G, 3G, 4G) have brought significant advances in the telecommunications industry, the functioning of companies, and in the broader range of services they deliver to the market and consumers.
However, the implementation of 5G outstrips by far all previous technologies in terms of relevance and importance. According to some experts, it could even be the new space race or the next stage of the industrial revolution, the so-called Industry 4.0. In fact, the world’s major powers —Europe, China, the United States and Russia— are all competing to spearhead its development.
The strategic nature of 5G stems from its potential to transform all fields, including water cycle management. It represents a profound change in the way mobile networks are designed, and in the way their different uses are addressed, resolving the difficulty of implementing use cases with increasingly disparate requirements in telecommunications networks.
EMBB (enhanced Mobile Broadband), MIoT (Massive Internet of Things) and uRLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications) functionalities make this possible. This fact, along with the creation of virtual corporate networks via network slicing, explains the revolution that 5G brings. Network personalization increases the reliability and quality of the service, and enables data processing in close proximity to the devices that generate the information thanks to edge computing. This helps to alleviate the load on cloud traffic, reduce latency and speed up data analysis in real time.
This ultra-flexibility of 5G networks opens up a whole range of possibilities globally, including use cases with very different requirements. They are valid, for example, both for the massive connection of low complexity devices (IoT), as well as for remote assistance in operating theatres using virtual reality.
Idrica’s recent whitepaper “5G – A game changer for the water industry” outlines the differentiating features of this technology and details the changes we will see in the industry. For example, the autonomous operation of plants, the use of real-time data and remote driving for farming.
5G is here. Now is the time to define and implement use cases to transform water infrastructure management thanks to the network deployments currently available.
Chema Nebot, Head of Business Development, Idrica
