All good product roll outs take time. And 5G is no different, with an infrastructure in its infancy and the high price of compatible devices. But, in the next five years or so, 4G will fade out and 5G will rise up. This powerful new technology will change our online lives completely, both for consumers and service providers.
For you and me
Think ‘the Ussain Bolt of connectivity’: 100 x faster than 4G. 5G will offer performance and connectivity levels that are as good as, or better than, fixed broadband. No need for underground cables to power your home internet. It will come over the air via wi-fi. You’ll be able to stream music and movies with no lagging and no interruptions. You’ll be able to install games on your phone, and play them, anywhere, without a hitch.
Initially, this precious commodity of connectivity will be targeted at urban, well populated areas. Rural areas, as is often the case, may be waiting longer.
For the paying user
Making digital payments will be quicker and easier than ever before. Buying big ticket items, like a car, will be less time consuming with credit checks and quotes being done within milliseconds. Zapping through your online shop or grabbing a sales bargain will be super speedy.
As the payment experience becomes breathtakingly quick, so the need for physical cash subsides. Many consumers use mobile wallets that store their cards on their phones. The simple tap of a mobile device to pay for goods - a cup of coffee, a gallon of petrol, lunch in a bar - is an increasingly common sight. The advent of 5G will mean credit and debit cards are far more likely to be stuffed in a drawer at home.
As people develop greater trust in mobile wallets as a safe and secure means of paying, notes and coins are becoming less commonplace and, some might argue, obsolete. Almost, but not quite. However, 5G will speed up this process.
For streaming services
For people who love movies and music, 5G is quite literally a game changer: the quality of your purchases – and the speed in which they download - will surpass all that you’ve known before. Watching 4K movies on your tablet or device will be truly frictionless, the image flawless with no frustrating buffering!
However, it’s not just about quality, it’s about quantity. Members of the same household, just rooms apart, will be able to stream what they like at the same time. So, if your teenager is streaming an old episode of Friends upstairs and your other half is streaming sport in the living room and your 9 year old is downloading a homework app in his bedroom, you can still stream that movie you’ve been dying to watch.
A troublesome connection, with interruptions, lagging and slow downloads, will be a thing of the past. With 5G there are no limits to the complexity and richness of the content that can be streamed onto a phone, even in a crowded place, like a music festival or football stadium.
With streaming instead of downloading, mobile devices will need less storage, everything is neatly tucked away in the Cloud for whenever you need it. As for gamers, heaven awaits. The fast data exchange and increased bandwidth delivered by a new generation of 5G enabled devices will allow for sophisticated, multi-player games to be delivered at high quality and with real-time responses.
For the mobile operator
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that 5G customers are valuable. The average revenue per user (ARPU) of a customer subscribing to a 5G network is far higher than those on 3G or 4G.
5G users spend more, bringing increased revenue to operators, especially when they pay through their phone bills with Direct Carrier Billing (DCB). With 5G, dormant DCB users will be likely to re-activate as more digital services become available.
Bango partners will benefit in multiple ways. Global giants, like Amazon, Google and Microsoft who use the Bango Platform to power payments and OTT bundles, will feel a surge in increased behavior. Mobile operators will benefit in two ways: through increased consumption of first and third party content and services, and from maximizing acquisition, retention and monetization of subscribers through the data insights provided by Bango. All generating increased revenue.
Where now?
Right now, 5G is limbering up at the starting line. But just wait for that race to begin: no messy and unreliable cables; no lagging; no cash or cards; no worry about data storage; no looking back. 4G will be left for dust.
Find out how to maximize the 5G opportunity through the Bango Platform