Prepping Networks for 5G and the IoT

Via Telecom Engine
By Christina Richards, VP at AOptix

Recent advancements in radio transmission technologies have taken a big step in the right direction

As the Internet of Things ushers in a new era of connectivity, service providers have found themselves in a race to bolster their existing infrastructure in order to meet the growing demands of bandwidth-hungry end users and their connected devices. At the same time however, the mobile nature of IoT-enabled devices means that fiber, which has long been viewed as the foundation of modern high-capacity networks, is often no longer an option for introducing the necessary high bandwidth and lower latency to these networks. So how will wireless network technologies need to evolve in order to meet these needs?

The recent meetings held by Congress on the state of wireless infrastructure in the country underpin the widely understood need to bolster both the size and strength of these networks. There is an insatiable demand for mobile data today, and even now, major carriers are attempting to offload subsidiary data from 4G LTE to lower-tier spectrums in an effort to prioritize the valuable space available in these networks. With current levels of data already creating such a strain, it’s clear that today’s networks are ill-prepared to accommodate the additional load created by tens of billions of new devices over the next few years.

Even as 4G is being rolled out to more and more markets, the wireless industry is already looking to the simultaneous high-bandwidth and low-latency promised by fifth-generation network technologies in order to support a true Internet of Things ecosystem. While speculations over the exact capabilities of 5G have varied, the 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership (5GPPP), a governing body responsible for determining these standards, recently identified several key requirements for the newest iteration of wireless networks. These include: