5G Promises and the Compatibility Angst
Jun 07, 2019
The long anticipated 5G dream situation is being rolled out from the mills of global technological giants to take the world by storm. The wireless world will not be the same anymore, given the promises involved therein.
We can easily discern a quasi-geometric progression in the dramatic evolution of the global connectivity regime with each stage identified by a digit behind G. During the 1G era, which started its long march in Japan in 1979, wireless verbal communication had been a costly and fussy thing with each massive handset costing abound 10000 dollars. The 2G dawn heralded the era of text message and data transfer at the rate of 1.5 days for 1GB data transfer.
During the 3G era it took 16 hours for the same amount of data transfer and the prospect of information superhighways had already caught the imagination of the world. In the contemporary world of 4G, the time period has been reduced to less than 1.5 minutes and now the world is waiting in trembling hope for the true game changer. The latency rate will be reduced to 1 milli second from the current rate of 100 to 200 milli seconds. Moreover, data transfer rate will make a spectacular quantum jump from 20 Mbps to 20 Gbps.
The frantic race to be the early bird to steal the show has all but coalesced to an all-out trade war or even a proxy war between the business savvy US administration and the Chinese business engine piloted by Huawei. For all practical purposes, the cold war which lasted to the early nineties, has given way to trade war with China and the US vying for an upper hand. IP piracy and protection of IP rights have become the major bone of contention between the traditional and surging industrial and technological giants of the emerging poly-polar world.
It is certain that 5G is going to be a palpable reality in the none-too-distant future, with the US, China, South Korea and Sweden on the frontline.The jobs cover standardization experts, 5G mobile communications, researchers, modem system experts, LTE/5G wireless baseband algorithm engineers, senior algorithm experts etc. The areas destined to undergo dramatic changes include antennas and RF path, fibre infrastructure, outdoor small cells, in-building wireless, and spectrum management. The debut of the latest generation would purportedly result in three million new jobs and 275 billion-dollar additional infrastructure investment in the US alone. But the transition from 4G to 5G will be a long-term process and it will not be a dramatic debut with a flourish. Even in the US, the changeover will be a protracted process and by 2025, only 48% of the cell phones will switched over to 5G. It will be many more years before the countries of the south will be in the 5G rarefied circle. To pre-empt the collateral damage to existing IP rights and IP in the making transcending almost all realms of technology, it is of vital importance to make sure that the product is 5G compatible and the pioneers who made it happen are given their fair share. This situation is applicable to all those investing in 5G innovation. In order to ride the opportunities evolving therefrom, the players in the field need to map or synchronize their IP to the 5G standards. Therein lies new business opportunities and multiplied revenue. A facility that can map a complex IP to the 5G standards, if any, is the need of the hour.
Relecura Inc, a pioneer in introducing unique ideas in IP analysis such as creating taxonomies on IP portfolios and measuring the impact of inventions, is the only forum that offers such a facility now. It uses AI, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to analyze the target IP and the 5G standards and carries out a lucid and systematic analysis and points out the specific sub areas where that match.This facility will be of great benefit to the researchers, R&D facilities and IP right holders anywhere in the world. Many patent holders right across the world are wondering where their IP fits in, if at all, or what the niche of a particular patent under the all-pervasive shadow of 5G is.
