Out under the glittering lights of Las Vegas last week, the world was introduced to thousands of new consumer tech innovations. CES is the world’s largest showcase of its kind, a beacon for tech brands and companies ranging from three-man startups to titans of the industry. They come together and show what newfangled gadgets they have on offer for the everyday man.
We have seen televisions that roll up like yoga mats, rings that can be coded to play music when sensing a colour, a self-diagnosing medical kit for your baby, space toilets, slicker-than-average self-driving future cars and, of course, you’re not a tech show worth your salt if you don’t have at least one prototype of a flying taxi.
If all these gadgets had to have one thing in common it would be the firm acknowledgement that the Internet of Things (IoT) is no longer novelty but a matter of fact.
Everything that can, will have some form of artificial intelligence (AI), data collection, and smart assistant built into it. And you can be assured that your new electric toothbrush will be collecting data on exactly how you brush, and your plaque build-up info will be sold to the highest toothpaste bidder. There are even reports that some brands, such as Vizio, are able to make their prices advertised on television so low because the brand pre-emptively factors in how much money it will make from selling your data to third parties.
As things stand the only thing keeping us from living our full and best IoT Jetsons life is speed. Which is why the loudest whisper in the hallways of the conference was about 5G, the current catch-all term for the fifth generation of faster wireless communication that got its start at the dawn of the 1980s. For a while in SA any form of G was mostly just a tiny temptress on your phone’s status bar that would appear and splutter before reverting back to edge (E), as you prayed for Facebook to load a little faster in your boring meetings.
But besides having a five instead of a four on your phone screen — and giving the service providers more reason to charge us even more exorbitant prices for data — what does 5G actually mean for us practically?
The theory goes that 5G will bring speeds of about 10 gigabits per second to your phone — that’s more than 600 times faster than the typical 4G speeds on today’s mobile phones. But the reality is that even when 5G does burst on to the scene it will be faster than what we have now but not near its full potential because of the infrastructural upgrades that will be required.
The word in the corridors is that most carriers will try to hack what they are currently using for 4G to get on the scene as fast as competitively possible, resulting in something akin to 5G lite. Eventually, the networks are supposed to upgrade their tech to use “millimetre wave”, a wireless spectrum that uses the now uncrowned range above either 24GHz or 30GHz, depending on whom you ask. The only downside is that millimetre wave signals are less reliable at long distances, thus the need for new hardware solutions.
With this speed will come greater access and transfer of larger amounts of data far quicker, opening up the doors for tech such as mass-produced self-driving cars to finally be possible. And 5G will also be able to serve far more devices at once and operate at a far higher standard nearly in real time. That will allow all of those internet-connected cars, sensors, thermostats, toothbrushes and other gadgets on display at CES to work at peak performance all at the same time, not to mention the countless other IoT gadgets that will be coming out.
These aspects and the future promise of 5G will be an important pillar in everybody’s other favourite catch-all tech term; the fourth industrial revolution.
Naturally, the race is on to see who will get the job done first. Much of the Huawei vs US trade war, banning and jailing fanfare is said to be because the US is worried that the Chinese will have a jump on it in terms of getting the tech going out at large-scale first. If this does happen there are great fears that it will leave everyone else behind the curve in the tech race.
There is also a small group of outliers who are worried that we are too focused on this race and its positive potential to stop and think about the possible negative consequences this tech may have. 5Gspaceappeal.org is an international appeal to the “UN, WHO, Counsel of Europe and governments of all nations” to stop 5G altogether, on earth and even in space.
As of January 11, the appeal had 31,291 signatures of “scientists, doctors, environmental organisations and citizens from [many] countries” who believe 5G will enormously increase exposure to radio frequency radiation levels that have been proven harmful for humans and the environment. They go on to state that the deployment of 5G constitutes “an experiment on humanity and the environment” and that such a plan should be defined as a crime under international law.
“If the telecommunications industry’s plans for 5G come to fruition, no person, no animal, no bird, no insect and no plant on Earth will be able to avoid exposure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to levels of RF radiation that are tens to hundreds of times greater than what exists today, without any possibility of escape anywhere on the planet. These 5G plans threaten to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of the Earth’s ecosystems.”
They may turn out to be the tech version of doomsday preachers, but regardless of the fist waving or good intentions, 5G is coming, in one shape or another, to a status bar near you.
• McKeown is a gadget and tech trend writer.
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