COVID-19 Slowed Work on 5G but Also Made It More Critical, IEEE Told

The pandemic gave 5G a needed push yet slowed work on standards and deployment, said Kaniz Mahdi, VMware vice president-advanced technologies, at an IEEE webinar Thursday. The wireless industry had high expectations for 2020, "expected to be a year of transformation,” Mahdi said. “5G was expected to be the driving force,” she said: “Then COVID happened.” The transformation instead has been driven by the pandemic, which changed “the way we do our work, the way we shop … the way we are educated,” she said. For years, it wasn’t clear what “killer app” would drive 4G adoption, she said. Then came apps like Uber and Airbnb, and “you have widespread adoption of massive broadband, universal data.” 5G will enable “highly interactive collaboration” among devices, she said: Machines will become “the ultimate end user.”