Following from his first article, Cutting through the hype: what is 5G offering?, Kevin Werry outlines some of potential benefits of, and opportunities for, 5G in important areas of the Caribbean life.

 

Aside from the tourism sector, most countries in the Caribbean rely on agriculture, fisheries and mining natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals. All of these areas can be further developed and improved with the help of 5G. Currently, Caribbean countries need to concentrate on building fiscal and financial resilience, and investing in preparedness, in order to reduce the large human and economic costs caused by climate change and tourism market fluctuations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

5G in healthcare

On top of introducing travellers to immersive experiences with the help of fast uplink/downlink speeds and ultra-low latency, 5G can influence eHealth and improve the response speed to natural disasters, such as hurricanes.

5G can facilitate eHealth by extending medical support to remote areas, transporting patients more efficiently and filling gaps created by a lack of skilled medical personnel. While 4G enables remote diagnostics within a hospital or venue, and the care and tracking for senior citizens, 5G will make ambulance remote diagnostics and telemedicine possible, alongside improved remote patient monitoring and high-value asset tracking, by providing rapid transmission and processing of medical data, along with reliability and extremely low latency in critical patient applications and more.

 

5G in agriculture

Being the major land-use activity in the Caribbean, agriculture contributes to the domestic food supply and provides employment. However, it is an industry with a high level of exposure to climate change and natural disasters. 5G equipped sensors, combined with artificial intelligence, can create predictive models that dramatically reduce risk and increase efficiency for farms of all sizes. Smart farming can potentially improve yield by using appropriate sensors and selecting and applying pesticides to plants with disease at an earlier stage. Systems that monitor crops and soil conditions would provide farmers with real-time data to quickly adjust their operations, better deploy resources, and even run farming tasks remotely.

 

But even though 4G offers high data speed and good connectivity, interconnecting a large number of devices plays a key role in smart farming in remote places, with low installation and maintenance costs. 5G allows connection of over 1,000 more devices per meter than can be supported by 4G. In this way, smart agriculture could potentially address food security, climate change, water shortages and resource utilisation through a communication network. 

 

5G and the blue economy

The Caribbean’s sustainable use of ocean resources, known as the “blue economy,” offers potential for economic diversification, while preserving the region’s environment, as well as further development of other sectors with potential for growth. Establishing a 5G network and connecting smart devices can help monitor the sea water from above and below, as well as tracking marine creatures with the help of drones.

 

For example, researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Southampton in the United Kingdom have developed jellyfish and squid inspired robots that mimic the quick and efficient movements of these ocean habitants. The device is ideal for probing sensitive ocean environments, including coral reefs. Created using 3D printing, they are made of soft, flexible rubber material and use small powerful propellers to move with the propulsive efficiency of a jellyfish.

In the UK, Vodafone is installing a 5G mobile private network (MPN) in Plymouth Sound, which will be the world’s first 5G ocean-based marine testbed. Business and academics will be able to use this network to test, research and innovate new possibilities such as driverless boats, smart shipping as well as environmental monitoring. 5G will significantly increase the data that can be collected by connected buoys that measure, observe and record a wide range of sea water parameters helping to increase our understanding of how oceans are changing.

 

5G in disaster response

Furthermore, using 5G could lead to improving response times in hurricane season by providing first responder teams with real-time data from drones and connected IoT sensors over 5G networks. For example, FirstNet, a public safety network created for first responders in the United States announced that first responders in parts of 38 cities and more than 20 venues would gain access to AT&T’s mmWave (5G+) spectrum. The collaboration with AT&T resulted in upgrading the dedicated FirstNet network core to enable reliable 5G connectivity, which is ideal for IoT and video intelligence solutions.

 

The knock-on effect of 5G efficiencies

5G also allows operators to manage energy consumption more effectively. According to Huawei, 4G base stations consume 80% of total network energy used, with nearly half of the electricity consumed in cooling transmission equipment. However, 4G networks consume more energy than 5G networks, thus 5G in the Caribbean could reduce consumption of vital electricity. 5G towers have fewer heat-generating electronic components, decreasing the difficulty of cooling them down. Compared to 4G towers, the recently developed liquid-cooling and solar power technologies to optimise cooling, reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80% and reduce operating expenses by nearly a third.

Moreover, 5G technologies can significantly optimise energy waste through smart heating and air conditioning control. Connected sensors can be deployed to monitor and adjust temperature and air units automatically depending on the presence of people in a building or a room. In their Smart 5G Factory launched in 2021, Ericsson observed that uses such as energy monitoring and management save around 5 per cent of the energy bill, whilst environmental monitoring can lead to a 5 per cent reduction in waste. Altogether the Factory is 24 per cent more energy-efficient than baseline.

The deployment of 5G climate change technologies could improve water management through the infrastructure for mass IoT (Internet of Things) sensor deployments, which allows low-cost sensors to detect harmful chemicals in the water supply and alert the public of possible health risks. These sensors can manage leaks in waterlines, provide early flood warnings, and transform the agriculture industry.

 

5G networks open up so many opportunities to benefit the social and economic welfare of countries – beyond the well documented high speed and low latency network performance.  Werry Consulting recommends that governments and mobile network operators look at specific country / regional use cases and consider how these could bring a wealth of benefits and opportunities for countries in these difficult times.

 

 

Image credits: Christoph Scholz (flickr); Gerd Altmann (Pixabay); Pxfuel; pxhere