Since the dawn of the industrial revolution back in the late 18^th century, business activity and advances in technology have gone together hand in hand. With the second industrial revolution – which we’re currently in the midst of right now – exactly the same thing is happening all over again. Only in this case, the explosion is digital, with computing, mobile technology and the Internet setting the pace. And it’s vital you don’t miss the boat. That’s why deciding on the right connectivity solution can be genuinely important.

Not only because of the natural progression of markets, the economy and how companies evolve. But the global socio-health situation and the COVID-19 pandemic mean connectivity solutions have to be adopted and technologies updated much more quickly than you might expect under normal circumstances. Keep in mind, those ‘normal circumstances’ already required enormously rapid adaptation. So how can you adequately respond to such challenges? What solution really is best for the business realities of today and tomorrow? There’s a handful of criteria you should consider to guide you in making your decision.

Urgent and immediate adoption. 4G connectivity

Offering the business sector highly efficient connectivity, whilst taking advantage of a technology that’s already available at the same time, the most appropriate option is 4G or LTE (Long Term Evolution) connectivity technology. It was first rolled out in Spain in 2013 and, currently, the vast majority of operators are able to offer connectivity services to their customers with high capacity and very high speeds, around 1 Gbps.

All telecommunications companies can use 2G, 3G and 4G technology indistinctly via 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz frequencies. Mobile devices – both smartphones and tablets – have established 4G technology as their default connectivity option for years now.

If rapid adoption of mobile technology is required within a structure already in place, along with wide coverage areas and speeds significantly higher than those supported by the old 3G, 4G LTE technology is always going to be the winning option. However, low initial investment and widespread adoption by users is hampered by the irregularity of performance, coupled with current data consumption demands and, above all, future demand.

Forecasting and the longer term. 5G connectivity

Though mobile data transmission is relatively sufficient for the vast majority of companies through 4G LTE, the post-COVID-19 reality we referred to earlier requires anticipating the needs of tomorrow. Remote working, which saw a significant boom during lockdown; the expansion of video conferencing as a mass communication tool; new leisure habits and consuming audiovisual content in 4K formats; the exponential growth of ecommerce…

all these indicators – among others – signal that we’re on the cusp of a new era in which demand for data consumption is set to skyrocket. To meet this growing need, a new alternative is required in terms of bandwidth, security and transmission speeds. This alternative involves looking to 5G connectivity, currently in development, to meet demand and guarantee reliable data transmission as we move to the future, with volumes up to ten times higher than today’s.

The second digital dividend will see the liberalisation of the 700 Mghz frequency to exploit 5G to the full – a shift planned for 2021. This places the widespread use of 5G among companies at the end of 2022 or 2023. Xavier Vilajosana, Professor of Computer Science and Telecommunications at UOC, predicts that one out of every five mobile connections in 2025 will take place via 5G^[1]. And that it will be an essential component of the technological and business realities we’re about to face: the Internet of Things, augmented reality, 8K video…

Experts at GSMA agree with the prognosis: to prevent the economy and productive markets from becoming paralysed in future in a context conditioned by the pandemic – and other analogous scenarios – mobile operators will have to invest more than a trillion euros over the next few years. And the adoption of 5G will guide many of these economic decisions. This level of investment is inevitable in both the medium and long term, if they really want to grasp the nettle with both hands. Nonetheless, both mobile operators and companies in the telecommunications sectors can considerably reduce their investments by working with neutral operators like lyntia.

The infrastructure of neutral operators doesn’t just facilitate and stimulate the adoption of 5G connectivity. Their knowledge, advice and technical services can also consolidate the technological leap stakeholders in the telecommunications sector have to make, thus advancing their plans by a number of years, as we wait for devices and the population to begin using 5G connectivity as standard.

^[1]      Source: www.laverdad.es