Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the 5G (5th generation) telecom services at the India Mobile Congress in Delhi. The technology aims to deliver a communications system with high data rates, minimal latency, and seamless coverage. It is expected to become operational by 2024–25.
Along with ongoing technologies, 5G has tried to give a long rope for emerging technologies, such as Blockchains, metaverse, crypto, Web 3.0 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“5G will play a pivotal role in advancing the use of Web 3.0 technologies. An increasing number of enterprises are embarking on the use of Web 3.0 technologies, and especially metaverse,” says Akhilesh Tuteja, global head – cyber security consulting, and India Head - Digital Consulting, KPMG.
How Will 5G Help Blockchain Technology
Industry experts believe that 5G’s inherent higher speed and better energy management efficiency will ease the integration of Blockchain-related technologies, and enhance as well as improve commerce.
“Blockchain will ensure data reliability, and security, thus enabling smarter and faster value functions in the complete overhaul. 5G can result in ultra-fast crypto transactions and more clarity for the users, coupled with reduced dormancy, sharp device connectivity, and highly lower costs,” says Dileep Seinberg, founder and CEO, MuffinPay, bill payment and utility crypto.
However, some technology experts believe that 5G will play a pivotal role in giving seamless experience in social communication gaming and dealing with detailed 3D avatars of products.
“It will become visible when collaboratively working on design, demonstration or servicing of these products using virtual tech. In such cases, both latency and speed are the keys,” says Sunil Maheshwari – co founder – StellAR-AugmentedReality.
Opportunities In Metaverse From 5G
Metaverse is all about replicating a huge immersive world with lossless performance, millions of avatars, lot of real-time transactions, interactions and/or communication, along with an added layer of XR, which requires multi-fold rendering, and all of which requires a powerful, high-speed Internet, which 5G promises.
“There’s no doubt that consumption and various new use cases of metaverse will increase by manifold with 5G’s foray,” says Rajat Ojha, CEO of Gamitronics and PartyNite, a company that works behind metaverse technology.
Ojha further said that 5G promises consistent coverage and capacity, as well as mobility support, low latency and reliable communication to enable devices to offload more to the edge and leverage edge rendering/streaming.
"Since these are essentials to metaverse to operate seamlessly and provide an user experience like never before, there’s no doubt that metaverse is just going to be more accessible to people,” he says.
Use Case In Metaverse
Metaverse of products will have many use cases, one of them being digital twin, which will help industries to get visualisation along with the massive amount of data generated from every machines in the industry using IoT (Internet of Things) sensors, which will help in doing predictive maintenance of mission-critical machines before they break.
“It saves money, and most importantly, these machines would never break the systems, e.g., water supply pumping station, power stations, machines which runs ships and/or submarines,” says Maheshwari.
How It Will Benefit NFT Industry
The NFT marketplace nosedived from its peak of $17 billion in early 2022 to $470 million in September 2022, a whopping 97 per cent drop, showed data from Dune Analytics, a Blockchain analytics firm.
5G has now given hope to the people in the NFT industry of a revival.
“While there might not be a direct impact, 5G is expected to enhance the quality of connectivity and mitigate issues related to network bandwidth, especially when it comes to Blockchain/Web 3.0 games. The question of whether or not the network can support an intense game involving NFTs will be effectively answered by bringing in 5G into the connectivity equation,” says Arjun Reddy, CTO at Guardianlink, an NFT platform.
How It Will Impact Cryptos
This upgrade will allow Blockchain-based applications that require real-time data processing, such as DeFi platforms, crypto exchanges, and payment systems, to thrive.
“5G will also open possibilities for the development of applications, such as Blockchain-based IoT networks that can support millions of devices, which is practically impossible for the current infrastructure to handle,” says Shrikant Bhalerao, cofounder, Seracle, a Blockchain company.
Overall, the entire Blockchain industry is optimistic about 5G, as it believes Blockchain will ensure data reliability and security, thus enabling smarter and faster value functions in the complete overhaul. Additionally, Seinberg notes that 5G can result in ultra-faster crypto transactions and more clarity for the users, coupled with reduced dormancy, sharp device connectivity, and highly lower costs.
