Vodafone 5G goes live on 3 July 2019

Transformation is coming. Are you ready?  Here are the initial headlines, followed by some thoughts on why we should care.

• Vodafone 5G will be available in seven cities at launch, with 12 other cities live by the end of 2019
• First company to announce 5G roaming in four European countries
• 3 July switch-on for both business and consumer customers, with 5G priced the same as 4G
• Four 5G smartphones and a 5G home router coming soon

Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and London will be among the first cities in the world to receive 5G – the new super-fast mobile technology.

Birkenhead, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Guildford, Newbury, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Wolverhampton will follow later this year.

5G promises higher speeds, higher capacity, and far lower latency than 4G. How fast? Experts expect internet speeds to be as much as  20 times as fast as 4G. The latency – the time between you hit “enter” and the data starts to stream in – should be nearly zero.

This tech is going to revolutionise our lives in the same as the internet, if not more so.  With no latency the internet of things, autonomous vehicles and AI will all have the bandwidth and speed they need.

So how will your business benefit. It will take a couple of years to be fully adopted, but when it does we will all need to be ready. Opportunities will abound!