Recently, the city of Amsterdam placed some critical notes on the installation of a 5G network in the city. Reasons for this critical attitude are the huge impact it has on the streetscape, concerns for health risks and the high costs involved with the installation of a 5G network (Telegraaf, 2019). Next to Amsterdam, Almere, Eindhoven and Rotterdam have also expressed their concerns about the implementation of a 5G network. The question which arises when hearing about these hesitations of cities related to 5G is: should cities actually implement a 5G network, or is it better to skip on this new development?
5G stands for the fifth generation of wireless networks and is expected to hit the markets in 2020. It will address the massive evolution towards a society in which Internet of Things plays a significant role. 5G will enable a very low latency, which is critical for real-time interactivity for services using the cloud. This is for example a key for success of Autonomous Vehicles (Gemalto, N.D).
Why would this be interesting for cities? Mainly, because of the many benefits 5G offers. Examples of these benefits are an increasing speed of internet, increasing reliability of internet, increased network coverage and lower battery consumptions (Dahiya, 2017). These benefits will be warmly welcomed by the citizens of a city. Besides, cities such as Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Rotterdam and Zwolle want to turn into Smart Cities. A smart city is a city that uses innovation and technology to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operations and services In a Smart City, IoT plays a big role, and the implementation of 5G is an important success factor for IoT to function properly (Mohanty, Choppali & Kougianos, 2016).
It sounds like 5G offers quite some benefits for cities, right? However, why do cities then still have their doubts about it? Well, next to the concerns mentioned in the introduction, the implementation of a 5G network also requires the installation of many kilometers of glass-fibre networks, which will largely impact the infrastructure of a city (Telegraaf, 2019). Besides, as mentioned, 5G could have negative implications for your health. Researchers still don’t agree on how big the risks are of the radiation caused by 5G, but the fact that the risks are likely to exist, can be a reason for cities to not install a 5G network. Lastly, there is still some doubt about the integrity of the supplier of 5G, the Chinese company Huawei. The United States even blame Huawei being guilty of espionage (NOS, 2019).
So, should cities implement a 5G network? The answer to this question is not easy, mainly because the benefits of 5G are clear, while the concerns are not. Only the concerns about the costs, changing streetscape and the impact for the infrastructure are based on facts, while the other concerns might not be relevant. Therefore, I don’t give an answer to the question. Instead, I am curious to see what cities will do, and if by 2025 we all live in Smart Cities, not driving any car ourselves anymore, enabled by 5G.
References:
https://www.gemalto.com/brochures-site/download-site/Documents/tel-5G-networks-
QandA.pdf
Mohanty, S. P., Choppali, U., & Kougianos, E. (2016). Everything you wanted to know about
smart cities: The internet of things is the backbone. IEEE Consumer Electronics
Magazine, 5(3), 60-70.
https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2281716-5g-van-zelfrijdend-busje-tot-smart-potatoes-
maar-is-het-veilig-genoeg.html
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/562735827/amsterdam-kritisch-op-uitrol-5-g-internet
The biggest advantage of 5G is, as you said, its enormous decrease in latency. Where the human reaction time lies around 300 milliseconds and the reaction time of 4G being about 200 milliseconds, it is astonishing how 5G brings that down to only 1 millisecond. The possibilities this enables, together with technological developments from the past decade, are just to big to ignore and I think that is the exact reason smart cities do not even have a choice rather to implement 5G or not. They have to in order to not fall behind. Practical implementations such as autonomous driving and surgery at a distance (using robotics), require real-time connectivity and data transfer.
Indeed, while the benefits are very clear, drawbacks are still very much discussed. The high speed and low latency of the new generation network is impressive, but the downside is that 5G uses shorter waves and higher frequencies to transfer data and that means it does not reach far. Comparing a 4G data transfer mast where you can go 10 kilometers without losing signal, a 5G transfer mast maxes out at about 300 meters. Not to mention how it will perform in bad weather. This means the network infrastructure not only needs to be renewed, but also expanded wit a lot more transmitters. As for the health issues, there are lots of complaints and protests regarding 5G, but no one has accomplished to publish facts about the damages 5G does or will do. Until thus far, only assumptions have been made like how the growing network infrastructure requires more engineers and that they will be more exposed to radiation than others. I think because pros are already considered facts and cons are just thoughts, cities will implement 5G ‘and just see what happens’.
Looper, C. (2019). What is 5G? Here’s everything you need to know. [online] Digitaltrends.com. Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/what-is-5g/ [Accessed 11 Sep. 2019].