Independent Thinking^®

The Future of Mobility

Editor’s note: Clients of Evercore Wealth Management and Evercore Trust Company will soon be able to access a dedicated App, a subject we will discuss in the next issue of Independent Thinking.

In the interim, here is a synopsis of a recent internal Evercore article on 5G technology by the firm’s Chief Information Security Officer Elsa Ferreira.
 
5G, essentially the fifth generation of cellular technology since the first was introduced in 1979 (and four years later in the United States), will be up to 100 times faster than 4G, with real-world speeds reaching nearly 2Gbps and theoretically speeds of 20Gbps once fully deployed. Latency, or time delay, should be drastically reduced, to one millisecond from 50 milliseconds presently, once fully developed. At the same time, more users – as many as one million devices in a square kilometer – will be able to simultaneously connect to the network. In short, users of 5G should experience a near real-time interaction across thousands of miles.
 
This enhanced connectivity is inspiring new opportunities that can change the way businesses, hospitals, and even whole cities operate. As businesses grow, they rely on their employees to be more productive in more places, and 5G ensures greater dependability on mobile devices.
 
Additionally, 5G will also offer network management features, among them network slicing, which allows mobile operators to create multiple virtual networks within a single physical network. This capability will enable wireless network connections to support specific uses. A self-driving car, for example, would require a network slice that offers extremely fast, low-latency connections. A home appliance, like a smart refrigerator could be connected via a lower-power, slower connection. And the “Internet of Things”, which uses computing devices embedded in everyday objects, could use secure, data-only connections.
 
So when is 5G coming? The United States, Japan, South Korea, and China are largely driving the first 5G buildouts. The four major services providers in the United States, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, are all launching 5G and in some metro areas it’s already available. The carriers expect general deployment by the end of 2020.
 
In the interim, a 6G network is already on the horizon, led by the University of Oulu in Finland which is focusing on data transmission.
 
Interestingly, the American taxpayer foots the bill for GPS service around the world. All GPS program funding comes from general U.S. tax revenues, largely through the Department of Defense, which has the primary responsibility for developing, acquiring, operating and modernizing GPS.