The future of our world will be built on a new universe of connectivity as seen through extended reality (XR), the metaverse, and enterprise applications. Advanced network capabilities and 5G will bring to life a sustainable future for navigating a hybrid world.
Ronald van Loon is an Ericsson ambassador, and is collaborating with the Ericsson event “Imagine Possible Santa Clara” to discuss advanced global connectivity and its impact on the future of our experiences, and how businesses and communities can support this vision.
Today, there is disruptive innovation occurring across multiple technology industries such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile edge compute, IoT, and much more. These technologies can drive exponential innovation for organizations and drastically alter the lives and experiences of consumers and society.
Network connectivity is greatly improving and 5G convergence is expanding. 5G is offering meaningful differentiated experiences to consumers, businesses, and industries. Telcos are continuously growing 5G networks capabilities to support modern digital driven business objectives, a breadth of new interrelated and integrated technologies, and new consumer and employee behaviors and expectations.
5G is expanding across more cities, businesses, and private networks like venues, manufacturing sites and stadiums. Even consumers are excited about 5G, with breakthroughs in gaming, video, and new extended reality (XR) use cases coming to life.
However, the operator community needs to work together to build standardized APIs and get them exposed to developers so they can deliver valuable new applications that are built on unique network capabilities.
Developer Challenges & Operator Opportunities
“We want to help the operators, the network providers, create those APIs, expose those network capabilities to developers in an open, intuitive, and programmable way so they can build great applications on top,” explains Niklas Heuveldop, President and CEO of Ericsson North America.
There is a significant opportunity for operator communities to break new ground and collaborate by demonstrating the possibilities that can be imagined and realized with 5G and advanced networks, and give developers the tools to build amazing applications.
But the problem is that businesses, consumers and developer communities don’t yet fully grasp the incredible value that’s unlocked by advanced network capabilities and 5G. Even if they do, developers don’t have enough tools at their disposal that make it easy to create new services and applications.
When you think about it, cloud service providers are a lot further along in developing storage and compute for developers to design new services in comparison to the telcos on the network connectivity side. The developer community needs the same support and opportunity to configure great applications by building on unique network capabilities.
Enterprise 5G in Smart Factories & Intelligent Ports
Businesses, consumers, and developers, across industries need to realize that the network infrastructure is available with the cloud, storage, and compute solutions that developers need to deliver amazing applications at scale. High performing networks exist, and businesses are demonstrating exponential value from new cases.
Enterprises are transforming and impacting the public sector. There is significant value to be realized. For example, smart factories require a foundation that’s built on 5G capabilities, and organizations can implement use cases that demonstrate its impact on manufacturing, such as with condition monitoring solutions like predictive maintenance which can reduce maintenance costs by 20% and improve machine uptime.
Intelligent ports are using advanced AI and 5G capabilities to enhance port operator safety for unloading materials like coal and cement by using autonomous driving. This resulted in enhancements to productivity by 50% and a 15% operating income improvement for the port operator.
Other cases such as remote surveillance cameras that are built on mobile edge compute nodes improve port security, resulting in a 6% reduction in employee costs and a 5% cost savings to an insurance premium. Insurance companies are more receptive to reducing costs because safety and security is greatly enhanced.
It’s these types of achievements in use cases that truly demonstrate the value and impact that 5G advanced network connectivity can offer for organizations from a capabilities and sustainability standpoint. Smart factories and intelligent ports have a large impact on the environment, as these improvements to the efficiency of operations reduce an organization’s resource consumption, for example.
Standardize 5G Capabilities for Developers
People need access to standardized capabilities so they can start making a real impact on the future of a connected world. Developer communities need to make sense of network capabilities in the connectivity data, and it’s up to operators to collaborate so businesses, consumers, and society can benefit.
By Ronald van Loon