Imagining Life with 5G in a COVID World
Alan Pentz, CEO
Washington DC
May 1, 2020 - Lots of us have been realizing how much tougher this COVID situation would have been without the Internet. Without work from home and Zoom. Whatever was left of our economy would have shuttered and we’d all probably be engaged in subsistence farming. But I think it’s interesting to think what it would look like if we had full 5G up and running during the crisis. Predictions are a dangerous business so let’s just call these all guesses:
Telepresence: will make Zoom lifelike. While maybe not 100% like being in the same room with someone, I think the telepresence of 5G will be several orders of magnitude better than what we have today. Maybe we get to 90-95%. Grainy screens, stuttered movements, and the like make a big difference to social creatures so focused on reading tiny and almost imperceptible signals from each other. This is an area that will be several orders of magnitude better-like 150 inch OLED flat-screen TVs with state of the art surround sound vs the black and white 6 inch tv with rabbit ears I had in my room as a kid.
Life-like virtual/augmented reality: These technologies will make participation in conferences, games, and other events far more compelling from the home. As with telepresence, the increasing sophistication of these virtual and augmented worlds will have us questioning the need for travel and in person gathering.
AI and Machine Learning: will surface the pandemic and reveal its nature fair more quickly and make the nature of the disease undeniable. The counterpoint to this thought is that China and other authoritarian countries will use the same technology to hide the outbreak of disease more quickly. It’s a fair point but I do think even data from Singapore and Taiwan will register and become actionable more quickly.
Drug repurposing: Again this is an area where AI/machine learning is helping now and will be even better in the future. Repurposing involves identifying drugs that are approved for other purposes that can be used off-label as treatments. Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir are the current stars of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the future we can find these potential treatments more quickly and more effectively.
Haptic feedback and Robotics: One of the often touted use cases for 5G is remote surgery. The low latency and data processing speeds of 5G will allow a surgeon to use robotic surgical devices remotely with actual haptic feedback. This has in fact already happened in China. Many of the most devastated industries involve anything requiring close contact: physical therapy, personal training, dentistry, etc. In the 5G near future, providers could use remote robotics to deliver services. Some may be appropriate for the home. Maybe a physical therapy practice sends a device for you to use throughout therapy or they could use unmanned rooms with equipment from the provider that could be sterilized and disinfected after each treatment. The latter seems more likely for something like dentistry with lots of complex equipment.
Industry 4.0: With technologies like additive manufacturing, 3D Printing, robotics, and the like we will have far more flexible supply chains. Adapting a factory to manufacture personal protective equipment or other needed goods might simply be a software tweak. In addition, these technologies reduce the need for human labor. That will allow manufacturing to reshore closer to its end market and achieve just in time efficiency without the risk of breaks in the chain. Additionally the reliance on human workers who may get sick is lessened and makes the supply chain more resilient.
These are just a smattering of the potential ways in which 5G might transform life and work in a future pandemic or disaster. It’s also likely that the largest impacts will come from technologies we haven’t even thought of yet. This fact is why it is so essential that we invest in building out 5G networks and funding innovation on top of them. As Marc Andreeson recently wrote, It’s Time to Build.
Author
Alan Pentz, CEO and Founder of Corner Alliance, has worked with government leaders in the R&D and innovation communities across DHS, Commerce, NIH, state and local government, and the non-profit sector among others. He has worked in the consulting industry for over ten years with Corner Alliance, SRA, Touchstone Consulting, and Witt O'Brien's. Before consulting, Alan served as a speechwriter and press secretary for former U.S. Senator Max Baucus and as a legislative assistant for former U.S. Representative Paul Kanjorski. He holds an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
