A recent survey of the awareness of 5G and its benefits amongst smaller businesses in the UK found a degree of indifference. Only one fifth of those surveyed regarded the provision of 5G services as a priority for their businesses in the short to medium term.

Many of those questioned were more concerned with the availability and quality of existing mobile services and showed little enthusiasm for adopting 5G.

In contrast, a survey of IT specialists in the USA found that a large majority of those surveyed believed 5G would be a critical networking technology for their company in the next three years.

The key benefits important to those early adopters include improvements in security, data transfer rates and reliability. Edge computing, artificial intelligence and large scale data analytics were some of the technologies they plan to exploit with 5G.

The contrast between the enthusiasm for 5G displayed by networking executives and the indifference of many in the UK business community could be explained by a lack of knowledge of what 5G can offer.

PTT’s online courses “Introduction to mobile systems” and “Mobile radio communications” describe the evolution from 2G to 5G mobile systems and the benefits of 5G compared with earlier generations.