5G Rollout: What Does It Mean For Your Business?

If you are looking for a telecommunications service provider for your business, you may be somewhat intimidated by a lot of the esoteric terminology you encounter. If you are to commit to investing in a new system, you want to know just what it is, what it does, how it works and what all that jargon really means.

A good example of this is 5G telephony. The obvious thing you can conclude from hearing the term is that 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G must have already happened. But what is 5G, why is it an upgrade on 4G and, most importantly, how can it actually help your everyday business?

Unfortunately, not everyone does get a clear explanation, which is why some misconceptions exist.

Indeed, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a conspiracy theory that there was no virus at all, but that people were getting sick because of something harmful contained in 5G signals. Many telecom installations were vandalised by believers in such strange ideas.

Other conspiracies include weather manipulation, mass bird deaths, micro-robots and mind control. All are, needless to say, nonsense.

So what is 5G really about? In essence, it is actually something much simpler. It simply means the fifth generation of mobile technology and represents the latest advance on its predecessor, 4G.

It offers wireless internet and mobile telephone services with greater capacity and faster speed than 4G. That means, for example, that anyone using it for an internet connection will see faster download speeds, while the higher capacity means more devices can be connected online in a small area at the same time.

From this it starts to become clear just what benefits 5G can offer a business. If you need to have lots of capacity to communicate with people on the phone or online, while having limited office space, 5G is clearly going to benefit you.

The way 5G does this is not by using some revolutionary new means but by harnessing high radio frequencies of 28 Ghz, which means more data can be transmitted at a faster speed, with Vodafone saying it is up to ten times faster than 4G.

In fact, there are only two limitations on 5G at present. The first is that while it is being rolled out across Britain, many places don’t have it yet.

However, over nine out of ten homes and business premises are now connected and most providers are seeking to make 5G coverage universal, so this should not be an issue for long. The government aims for the whole of the UK, even remote rural locations, to have access by 2030.

The other constraint is that in some places, 5G has not reached its maximum potential, which means its speeds, while faster than 4G, are still not quite what they could be.

Ultimately, 5G is not something scary or dangerous, but an upgrade on the existing communications infrastructure. Everyone will need to adjust to it as the 2G and 3G infrastructure will be gradually shut down to enable 4G and 5G to dominate.

The next step for your business is to see how you can get involved in this revolution and enjoy all the speed and capacity advantages it brings.