5G is the latest mobile phone technology that is taking the world by storm. The new wireless standard offers improvements in several key areas over previous standards such as 4G LTE, leading to improved reliability, increased speeds, and reduced network latency from an end-user perspective.
Carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are busy rolling out 5G networks across the United States. Now that 5G is available in many geographic locations, organizations are leveraging the increased performance of additional bandwidth and lower latency across multiple business technologies, including: Mobile Unified Communications (UC).
Let’s take a look at how 5G removes many of the technical hurdles inherent in traditional 4G LTE wireless networks, making the use of 5G UC services indistinguishable from corporate LANs.
Mobile UC challenges in current generation networks
When employees work outside of the corporate LAN and connect to a traditional 4G LTE network, they often make concessions from a UC perspective. UC services such as video that require higher bandwidth, lower latency, and lower jitter often suffer from quality issues as current generation wireless carrier networks cannot consistently meet minimum performance requirements. there is.
Previously, remote and mobile users had to adapt their use of UC tools to what the underlying cellular data network could support, which limited their ability to get their jobs done. This was an issue of particular concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, now that 5G is widespread in most metropolitan areas, this concern has faded, and users are becoming more and more comfortable using 5G networks at home and on the go. .
How 5G supports remote and hybrid working
5G will significantly expand the physical locations where work can be done. In areas where 5G is available, users working in locations such as hotels or coffee shops can choose to use their phone or mobile hotspot service to tether their laptop. Users don’t have to use guest Wi-Fi in these locations, which are prone to performance and security issues.
The ability to carry 5G-connected devices in your pocket supports clearer audio and video while traveling, greatly increasing your ability to instantly communicate with others.
Advantages of 5G UC over 4G LTE
Most carriers are steadily replacing LTE as the last-mile wireless technology for connecting customer devices to their networks. Although these rollouts have been slower than expected due to the pandemic and supply chain issues for various components, most major airlines appear to be back on track. Without going too deep into the details, his 5G performance benefits compared to LTE mainly revolve around three key improvements:
- speed. 5G is estimated to be up to 100 times faster than 4G LTE technology. However, the actual performance improvement will likely be in the 5x to 10x range. This speed increase may not seem significant, but it is enough to allow mobile UC users to use bandwidth-intensive services, such as streaming high-quality real-time video.
- waiting time. Perhaps even more important than bandwidth is network latency. 5G latency is expected to be nearly 10 times lower than 4G LTE technology. Reduced latency will allow modern UC apps to function on his 5G carrier network as well as on the corporate LAN.
Low latency is especially useful for transferring real-time communications such as high-definition audio and video. Users have become accustomed to choppy audio and video and significant frame rate drops when connecting to 4G LTE networks, but those issues largely disappear when connected to a 5G tower.
- capacity. 5G wireless allows you to connect far more devices simultaneously compared to previous generation technologies. These include the latest 5G-enabled IoT devices. From a UC perspective, a user will not only communicate with other UC users on her 5G network, but also with autonomous devices in a machine-to-human capacity. Therefore, integration with various IoT sensors, surveillance equipment, and surveillance cameras is expected to become a new feature in the world of mobile UC.
5G-enabled UC challenges
Two major challenges tend to arise when using 5G networks for UC. First, 5G is not yet available in smaller cities and rural areas, so users may not always have 5G available where they need it.
Second, the UC services provided by your organization may be located in an on-premises data center connected to your corporate LAN rather than a global cloud service provider. This means that network traffic must traverse long distances to access UC servers over legacy VPN connections.
Both can compromise the throughput and network latency benefits of 5G, resulting in a subpar experience with choppy audio and frozen video. Therefore, it’s important to remember that enterprises need to act now to modernize their UC architecture to an as-a-service model that will significantly improve the remote workforce experience.
