5G Key Aspects and Future  – Expert seminar for students of Business Administration at TUL

Authors: Jindrich Cyrus and Pavel Pelech (Technical University in Liberec)

On Monday, October 30th, we held a special seminar for students of the Faculty of Economics. The topic was 5G – Key Aspects and the Future. The speaker was Dr. Jindřich Cýrus, head of Software Architecture and Development Department at the Centre for Nanomaterials, Advanced Technologies and Innovations at the Technical University of Liberec.

More than 60 students attended the seminar which gave them not only a brief overview of the development of mobile networks (from 1G to 5G and beyond), explained the basic technical background of the 5G infrastructure, introduced them to the 5G Alliance and the Skills2Scale project, but  – as they were students of the Faculty of Economics – also showed them the need to develop new applications, to think about automation and optimisation of processes and the impact of costs. Obviously, the economic part of the seminar led to a very fruitful discussion between the students and Dr. Cýrus.

Of course, the global economic outlook of the Czech National Bank that predicts the future of 5G technologies, could not be missing from the expert presentation for economists. According to CNB the 5G has enormous transformational potential in the context of the digitalisation of the economy. Given the right environment, 5G can become an economic driver with the potential to increase global GDP by up to by around a trillion dollars by 2030. The biggest market players today are North America, Europe and North East Asia.The choice of 5G use cases will be important going forward, with the most economically promising sectors currently being manufacturing, healthcare, transport and public administration. However, the combination of 5G with other advanced technologies will also play a role and, in the longer term, the arrival of the next generation, 6G.

Finally, students were able to experience the latest example of augmented reality thanks to Microsoft Hololens – the same ones used by  the ANTE-TUL teams  for their automated guided vehicle, as we reported in another article.

Many exciting questions were raised at the end of the seminar – some of themrelated the health issues that are (according to some of the students) associoated with the new 5G networks, but mainly the students see many great opportunities in both the business and non-profit sectors where the super-fast and low-latency communication is crucial and their questions were related to the future of 5G.