Vodafone Ireland, in partnership with Ericsson, have today announced Ireland’s first successful live demonstration of pre-standard 5G technology in Ireland. The event, which was held at the Douglas Hyde Gallery at Trinity College Dublin, showcased Vodafone Ireland and Ericsson achieving almost 15 Gigabit per second speeds with a latency of less than five milliseconds, demonstrating 5G speeds of the future. Vodafone also tested pre-standard 5G across Vodafone’s recently acquired 3.6GHz spectrum peaking at almost 1.8Gbits/sec.
The event also gave us the opportunity to see some real-life customer applications for 5G ranging from remote experts and augmented reality to high speed, low latency, immersive gaming. 5G technology will allow a vast selection of services to be delivered in a super-fast and efficient manner simultaneously. Some of the use cases that 5G will gradually enable over time include:
– driving super-high speed broadband and media: supporting increasing traffic demands from video services and interactive applications e.g. 4K streaming, video analytics and holograms;
– connecting massive numbers of devices: e.g. IoT devices and smart vehicles (from asset tracking and remote monitoring, to Vehicle to Everything), with 5G needing to provide a reliable response to billions of devices.
5G will provide faster, more secure, more reliable and robust connectivity which is essential to delivering mission critical services such as real-time video surveillance, self-driving cars, eHealth remote surgery and remote patient monitoring.
It will also provide ultra-low latency for human machine interaction: supporting real time response requirements for allowing virtual reality, augmented reality and real-time control of robotics.
The launch event in Dublin showcased what customers and businesses can expect from 5G through demonstrations such as The ‘Internet of Skills’ presentation which showcased exciting educational opportunities that will be made available to support the healthcare industry. This support could enable doctors to operate in a VR environment using a haptic glove, while students join the class through VR glasses to experience the operation.
We also got to see how, with a 5G network, remote technical experts will make it possible for technicians to avoid hazardous situations by using augmented reality to provide on-site assistance.
