A Glimpse Into 5G’s Impact On Retail Mobile

If you’re like me, where you pay attention to technology trends but are not necessarily steeped in any one specific technology, then you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about 5G. It really got onto my radar in January at the National Retail Federation Big Show. Nokia had their 4G/5G robot demonstration at the event, and besides the fact that it had robots in it, the demonstration really stuck with me. My conclusion: when people say that 5G is “faster” than 4G, you really have no idea how fast. You really don’t. The robots help drive the point home, but until you can see a mobile web page load on 4G vs. 5G, on your own phone, I think it’s hard for most people to really grasp how much faster 5G is. But one of the more exciting developments around 5G is that it is built to be IoT-friendly, as the Nokia video talks about. As more devices get out there and need to talk to each other, the need to access a high-speed cellular network will only put more pressure on 4G. On the other hand, a lot of the latency issues for things like digital signage responding to NFC would be pretty much solved by 5G – and that would be good news indeed. Read more at Forbes.