5 ways 5G will change life in Australia

You may have heard that the new 5G mobile network will make our phones faster. But did you know it could also be the technology that brings us self-driving cars, remote surgery and smart cities?

5G mobile technology may well be the catalyst that ushers in a new wave of life-changing technologies. And it's right around the corner with the first commercial services set to become available in 2019. Here are five things to look forward to in the 5G future.

5G dummy devices

Experts believe once 5G becomes widely available it the network's extreme speed and capacity could relegate much of our devices' computing from hardware to the cloud. What that could mean is the introduction of 'dummy devices' – phones, laptops, wearables and more with very little hardware but a lot of processing power – as long as they're connected to the network.

In the future it could be that the only limitation on what your smartphone or your smart watch or your smart milk carton can do is the availability of a 5G signal: 

• Maybe you'll be able to ditch your laptop and just have a smartphone with a holoscreen that lets you get your work done anywhere. 
• Maybe your smart watch will have the computational power to be your own personal doctor, monitoring your vital signs, communicating with the cloud and identifying patterns that could catch an illness in its early stages. 
• Maybe one day your toothbrush have artificial intelligence and will talk to you while you brush your teeth.

We're not sure why you would want that last one. But the point is you could do it with 5G.

5G self-driving cars

We all know 5G is going to be fast. But the thing that is perhaps even more exciting about the new network is its low latency. Latency is basically the time information takes to get from a device to the wider internet and back again. The typical latency for a 4G network is around 60 milliseconds, whereas a typical 5G latency could be as low as 1 millisecond.

That won't make much difference to what we do with our devices now. But it'll bring the kind of speed and accuracy needed for a whole range of new technologies, including self-driving cars. Because when your car is receiving information from the cloud telling it the position of all the other cars on the road and what they're doing, the difference between 60 milliseconds and 1 millisecond is the difference between a happy passenger and a dead passenger.

Self-driving cars will be really important in the future because 5G's ability to stream video with higher resolution and frame rates will mean we'll be able to play with virtual reality on the go. There's no way we'll have time to be driving cars anymore.

5G smart world

As well as being a huge leap forward in terms of speed, the 5G network will have increased capacity, allowing for many more devices to connect to the network at the same time. Devices like your lightbulbs, your fridge, the street light outside your home and the traffic lights on your street.

With 5G, smart home and smart city technologies will be able to roll out on a massive scale. Smart home appliances already commercially available include light bulbs, home security and energy conservation devices you can control from your phone. We should very soon see smart air conditioners that learn your habits and air temperature preferences, smart ovens that will preheat themselves when you start a recipe and smart dishwashers that adjust their settings based on what you cooked. 

Further down the line, we expect to see smart food packaging, smart clothing and even smart furniture. A smart milk carton might be able to tell an app on your phone when its contents are running low. A smart shoe might tell you when your soles have worn down. A smart chair might help you sit in the best position to get back support.

Smart city technologies, meanwhile, will control traffic lights, street lights, power and water supply, all from the cloud. Road sensors will monitor traffic flow, relay this information to cars in real-time and even adjust traffic light behaviour to help ease congestion. Street lights may adjust from low to high light using a motion sensor, to conserve energy. Sensors monitoring air quality may even be able to help monitor pollution and help with the early detection of bushfires. 

5G smaller world

5G's lower latency could also make it possible for us to remote operate machines performing complex tasks. Machines like robots performing life-saving surgery and mining vehicles doing whatever it is mining vehicles do. Imagine a surgeon in Sydney performing an operation on a patient in Coober Pedy or a driver in Perth remote-operating a truck in the Pilbara. That's possible with 5G.

What this means is a breaking down of the barriers of distance. FIFO working may become a thing of the past. Regional Australians could have the same ease of access to advanced medical care as those who live in the big cities. 

The lower latency of 5G will allow increased complexity in remote controlled devices like drones which could help farmers monitor large outback properties. Planes fitted with 5G cell packs could act as mobile cell towers, allowing 5G connectivity literally anywhere.

5G who even knows

The fact is, we don't know how many ways 5G might change life in the future, because no one's had a chance to play around with it yet. As with many technologies, the possibilities won't present themselves until the functionality is there. 

So it's going to be a waiting game. But we won't have to wait too long. Telstra and Optus will both begin rolling out 5G networks in 2019 with Vodafone to follow in 2020. The 5G network won't be available everywhere right away. But by the time it is, you can bet our world will start to look different. We can't wait to see just how different it will be.