tiny pipes in the sky, but lots and lots of them – they estimate one million devices per square kilometre.’
Finally, there’ s what Van der Bergh calls‘ mission-critical services’. These refer to any situation that involves life or death, and could include remotely driven vehicles, remote medical facilities, industrial automation, and suchlike. It’ s the type of high-speed, low-latency connection that would enable a medical surgeon to operate, in real time and via a surgical robot, on a patient who’ s on the other side of the planet.
It all sounds very futuristic, but that future is already here. MTN recently partnered with equipment vendor Ericsson to conduct 5G trials in Africa, while rival operator Vodacom has run similar trials with Nokia – both with a view to commercial deployment in the near future.
Those trials achieved download speeds of more than 20Gbit / second, with blink-of-an-eye latency( network round-trip time) of just 5 milliseconds – the highest speeds ever achieved on a mobile network in Africa, and significantly faster than the fastest connections available to South African consumers over fixed fibre-optic lines.
The fibre connection
That’ s not to say that 5G will replace fixed-line fibre connections.‘ You’ re always going to need both fixed-line fibre and mobile,’ Blake says, explaining that each one comes with its own set of trade-offs.‘ You will never beat the reliability of a fixed cable, but it’ s at a fixed point. Mobile gives you connectivity while you’ re mobile, but there are physical barriers like trees and buildings which mean you sacrifice some of your throughputs. So you want both: fixed line to your home, and mobile for when you’ re on the move.’
‘ We’ ve done three trials to date,’ says Geoffrey Blake, senior manager: technical regulation at MTN.
‘ The first was a proof-of-concept, while the second was an end-toend process, where we tested the entire network to see what the user experience would be like in the real world. The third trial was a use case, where we did a simulation with an autonomous car.’
Blake expects that, just as we currently have 3G routers for our laptops, we’ ll use 5G routers in the future.‘ It’ s a lot easier for the guys who make the systems to build you a router, which is bigger and static, than to build you a handset,’ he says.‘ The first 5G systems that come up will be routers for homes and businesses and things like that. After that you’ ll get into the handsets, and the real missioncritical stuff will come last.’ He expects 5G routers to hit the market in 2019, with the first 5G-enabled handsets / smartphones following in the second half of that year.
Van der Bergh suggests that homes or estates that cannot accommodate fibre might consider installing 5G home routers instead.‘ You will want the freedom to be able to go beyond your house, and beyond where the fibre is connected,’ he says.
A self-driving car that runs on a cell phone data connection? Now that’ s a future worth looking forward to.
Mark van Dijk
www. estate-living. co. za | 57