Posted on August 9, 2019
By Jeff Gudewicz
According to the Pew Research Center, 95 percent of Americans own a cellphone, with 77 percent owning smartphones. As traditional broadband usage has dropped in recent years, keeping tenants connected through a cellular signal has become more important than ever for those who want to stay competitive in the commercial real estate industry. And with 5G on the horizon and poised to become a disruptive threat to traditional Wi-Fi and wired internet systems, as well as a key force behind the rise of smart cities, connectivity is going to become more integral to daily life than ever before.
What is 5G?
5G, or the fifth generation of wireless technology, is a standard designed to deliver data speeds greater than 1 gigabit per second and low latency of less than 1 millisecond. This means much faster data speeds (100 times the speed of 4G LTE) and less delay between the request for a data transfer and the start of the data transfer in a cellular environment.
In addition, 5G will provide the ability to connect many more devices at the same time — 100 times more devices than 4G LTE, to be exact. This functionality will enable an explosion in the internet of things (IoT) through the connection of technologies such as virtual reality, drones, smart devices, self-driving cars and more. (See Commercial Real Estate and the Big-Data Deluge.)