Mr. Hamilton, how important will the 5G transmission standard be for companies in the coming years?

Neil Hamilton: The major mobile network operators like to point out the potential of 5G for the IoT. In common industrial IoT scenarios, however, huge amounts of data are not transmitted that require such a large bandwidth. 5G is therefore not necessarily particularly effective for this market. For a highly networked manufacturing operation that needs to move large volumes of process-critical data and wants to reduce the cost of physical connections, the situation is different. Against the backdrop of Industry 4.0, 5G is likely to play a relevant role here in the future.

What problems still need to be solved? What critical aspects need to be considered?

Neil Hamilton: If there are different standards, as is currently the case with mobile IoT connectivity, this can slow down the introduction. The leading licensed LPWA technologies - the Low Power Wide Area Network - include the competing standards Narrowband IoT and Cat-M1, which are based on the LTE/4G mobile network. However, this is not yet available nationwide and the cross-border interoperability of LPWA standards is limited. The immense hype surrounding 5G has also masked the critical aspects so far: the allocation process is now being questioned, the high set-up costs are being criticized and the bandwidth requirements for IoT applications are being called into question. In addition, the new standard will probably only be reserved for urban centers for a very long time.

The VDMA is calling for companies to be able to operate their own local 5G networks at their sites. How important and realistic is the implementation of this demand?

Neil Hamilton: 5G will create competition - including between network operators and large companies that want to take matters into their own hands. In fact, there are already reports that well-known companies, including ABB, Siemens, BASF, Sennheiser, Bosch, Daimler and VW, want to build their own local or regional 5G networks.

The real-time capability of 5G has not yet been defined in the standard. When can this be expected?

Neil Hamilton: The 5G standard will gradually evolve, including in terms of real-time capability. This is a prerequisite for the coordination of machines and processes in automated production, but also for mobile applications such as autonomous transportation systems. The auction for the award of radio licenses is due to take place in spring 2019. Infrastructure development can only start after this, which makes it difficult to predict. The first 5G islands could be available in 2020, but it is not expected to be available anywhere near nationwide in Germany until 2022. Real-time capability will then also have to prove itself in practice.

Connectivity solutions already exist for IIoT-related scenarios. Will these soon become superfluous or will they be able to withstand a future 5G landscape?

Neil Hamilton: The Industrial Internet of Things can be divided into two segments: battery-powered systems at the edge of the network and the data center in the middle. At the moment, we can't see 5G positioning itself for edge solutions. Realistically, 5G will be more useful at the backhaul, handling large amounts of data from many nodes connecting via 2G, 3G and LTE/4G. For large-scale IIoT scenarios, there are already better solutions that are available nationwide, cost-effectively and across borders - i.e. also for important mobile application scenarios. For example, the efficient and intelligent use of the existing mobile communications infrastructure is the better option for many IoT applications in which only small amounts of data are exchanged. Thingstream's tried-and-tested approach is to use the conventional, very dense GSM network in conjunction with MQTT/SN and USSD.