At Carrier Conference, Speakers Question 5G, Digital Divide

There were questions about 5G, how it will look in rural markets and if it could help or hurt the digital divide, at a conference Wednesday in Providence, Rhode Island. GCI will "have to look outside the box to figure out what solutions that we’re not currently thinking of are going to work in a lot of these markets,” said Kara Azocar, regulatory counsel-federal affairs. “We have to be innovative,” she told the Competitive Carriers Association conference. “Will 5G exacerbate an urban-rural divide on connectivity and are we going to end up with a second tier internet once you get out of the cities?” asked David Goldman, SpaceX director-satellite policy. “It doesn’t have to be that way.” Service in rural areas “will take work,” he said. “It’s going to take solutions that haven’t necessarily been the ones that you had thought of for previous generations.” ACA member GCI exists because it wants to bring the same services as in urban areas, said Rob Shema, the association's executive vice president-member services and finance. Rural providers haven’t “quite figured out” 5G in rural places, “but they will,” he said. “When folks say that 5G is not going to exist in rural America, that’s completely false,” Shema said: “It may look different and feel different.” At the low end, the industrial IoT will have as much combined value as the entire communications industry today, Tod Sizer, Nokia Bell Labs vice president-smart optical fabric and device research, said Wednesday. In Germany, wireless robots are transforming manufacturing, Sizer said. “They found that the wired robots were just getting in the way.” Industrial IoT will have lots of opportunity in the mining industry, he said, where “there’s a lot of need for advanced safety" and autonomous movement of people and machines. Early tests found IoT precision agriculture requires 23 percent less fertilizer and 15 percent less seed, with production increases of 27 percent, he said. ISPs also target agriculture (see 1908150057).