Super phones faster than a speeding bullet
This week, Vodacom smashed the record for data download speed on a mobile phone in SA, reaching 2.4Gbps (gigabits per second). That’s more than 10 times as fast as the average fibre-to-the-home connection, which typically runs at around 200Mbps.
The speed was achieved during a trial at Vodacom’s Midrand campus, using commercial 5G-enabled base stations in what is probably one of the best connected locations in the country.
However, its significance goes far beyond the public relations success it represents for the mobile network operator. It demonstrates the impact that this year’s long-delayed allocation of high-demand spectrum can have on the user experience, and opens the way to new possibilities in leveraging mobile broadband.
Vodacom SA technology director Beverly Ngwenya said this week: “5G technology can unlock incredible fibre-like experiences for users on the go, or where fibre installations aren’t feasible. Most notably, this is a preview of how Vodacom’s recently acquired spectrum will enable true 5G capabilities and raise the bar on network performance.”
During the spectrum auction by the Independent Communications Authority of SA in March, Vodacom paid R5.38bn for 110MHz of high-demand spectrum. Ngwenya did not provide a clear rationale for the use of gigabit speeds, beyond saying it would enable a number of fourth industrial revolution (4IR) use cases.
For those who already experience 5G speeds of between 50Mbps and 500Mpbs, gigabit speeds will make little difference. A 4K high-resolution video, for example, will not look very different, and that is about as demanding as the average user’s needs will be. However, when you have a household of working adults and entertainment-hungry teenagers drawing on the same connection at the same time, performance degrades fast, and gigabit speeds will restore the experience of a single person using that 100Mbps or 200Mbps connection.
The full benefits are still to come, though. They will play out as the world embraces several categories of technology revolution that have been promised for much of the past decade but have not materialised. It’s not so much about 4IR as about dramatic innovations in diverse areas of activity. The average user of technology is not yet fully exposed to these innovations, which have yet to become mainstream.
The most transformative of these, autonomous vehicles, are probably still a decade from prime time, held back by both regulatory and technology challenges. That, in turn, translates into a psychological barrier for consumers, who do not trust self-driving vehicles to make decisions quickly enough to keep them safe.
Enter 5G and gigabit speeds. Once such connectivity becomes standard, it will be possible for vehicles to communicate not only with their users’ devices, but also with other cars, smart traffic control infrastructure such as connected traffic lights, and with the systems used by law enforcement and traffic control authorities.
Not only to communicate, but to do so instantly, or so quickly that it seems instant. Split-second decisions that are beyond human reaction time will become feasible, and even trustworthy.
A second category that will benefit dramatically from gigabit speeds is a little more frivolous, but very much on the radar of the business and entertainment worlds: virtual reality (VR).
Right now, the VR discussion is dominated by the metaverse and the likes of Microsoft and Facebook parent company Meta that are punting it as the next way of work. However, the access mechanism for their versions of the metaverse will be VR headsets, and these are still deeply underwhelming in the user experience they deliver.
Most virtual worlds are a cartoon-like approximation of reality, rather than the photorealism users expect, due to the limitations of both storage and connectivity in VR systems. With gigabit speeds, any amount of data can be downloaded from the cloud at any speed needed to turn the virtual into the real.