The rollout of 5G nationwide will affect “pretty much all major vertical industries”.
That was the message from Chinese technology giant Huawei’s 海角视频 communications director Ed Brewster.
He made the comments as the smartphone manufacturer arrived at the MediaCity海角视频 piazza, Salford as part of its nationwide 5G Experience tour.
He said: “For vertical sectors, 5G is going to have lots of new applications, whether it’s connected factories to smart health to connected campuses, much more, much greater levels of connectivity and more connected things.”
Mr Brewster said the Manchester has the “structure, the organisations,the ecosystem and the environment” to be one of the places where 5G-enabled transformation could “happen quicker and faster than elsewhere in the 海角视频”.
“Manchester is probably the best example of where the government strategy and industrial strategy and policy is aligned with the local industrial business strategy and really involves all the key local stakeholders.”
Mr Brewster was joined by Saskia Coplans, founder and DPO of Digital Interruption, Mike Blake-Crawford, strategy director of The Social Chain and Dr Sunday Ekpo, an expert on 5G from Manchester Metropolitan University, for a panel discussion chaired by Dan Sodergren, tech entrepreneur and head of business services at The Landing.
Ms Coplans, whose firm provides security services for SMEs and Startups, said the arrival of 5G had created a “paradigm shift”.
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“This isn’t just '4G plus'...there are things that exist on the 5G network that simply can’t exist on the 4G network because it’s just not powerful and connected enough to hold it.”
She said 5G will “pull us into a more competitive environment”.
“We don’t realise we’re not competitive because of network restrictions and if you take the Middle East and North Africa, for example, they are much better connected in a mobile way than we are.
“Our legacy systems have been holding us back for a long time, so actually this really means that we’re going to be more competitive in the world.”
Mr Blake-Crawford said media businesses in Manchester can benefit greatly from 5G as its “lifeblood” comes from people being able to access video content on mobile devices.
“California’s got silicon valley but Greater Manchester has got social media alley, with Unilad and Ladbible and The Social Chain.
“Having greater access to media to millions of people around the world is essential to the profile of our businesses.
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“5G is going to alleviate a lot of stress and make it much easier for brands to connect with consumers in spaces such as live events, which for us as an agency is very exciting.”
E-commerce, agriculture, social media and surveillance were among the industries panelists said 5G would have the greatest effect on.
Dr Ekpo also said the industrial manufacturing will be hugely affected by 5G.
“In the manufacturing process, efficiency is going to be key that 5G will drive,” he said.
However, Mr Brewster said 5G will have “different impacts at different times to different sectors as they come to understand its potential”.
“I think it totally depends on strategies around the corporates and the industrial strategy.”
Ms Coplans added that “it’s not just about what 5G can do for Manchester but how the city can help 5G develop”.
“5G isn’t just some sort of existential thing that now exists, it’s something that needs to be improved upon it needs to be tested,” she explained.
“I come from the security community and we’re already looking at ways we can break it because if we can break it we can put better fixers in, if we put better fixers in it becomes more secure, and if it becomes more secure, it becomes more useful.
“Being in an environment like Manchester where you have production companies, security companies and media companies, it’s a really good opportunity to be testing what it can do and how it can be improved.”
Asked how 5G could impact security, Ms Caplans said: “You just really have to create security quite differently if everything is connected in a network, so your threat models will be different and you’ll need to put threat models in place.
“The biggest issue is what happens if the network goes down, so if we’re radically connected to the network, our hospitals are connected to the network, we have driverless cars and the network goes down, what happens?”