Advantage Australia in the race for Connected Vehicles
Australia is set to be the first country in the world with two functional and standardised 5G networks – a prerequisite for full vehicle connectivity – by the end of 2019 according to Optus Australia CEO Allen Lew.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona this month, the telco boss said that while the USA had already begun to roll out 5G networks, they did not align to the global 3GPP standards published by 3rd Generation Partnership Project.
What is 5G?
5G is the next generation of mobile networks after 4G. The network uses the same radio frequency technology as 4G, but use extremely high frequencies (30 - 300GHz) allowing shorter radio waves and greater bandwidth. In testing, 5G performance has been between 10 and 100 times faster than 4G in comparable areas.
Not only does bandwidth (the amount of data) improve but latency (time taken to communicate) is also enormously reduced and the network reliability is improved.
Autonomous Vehicles a Reality
The improved reliability, bandwidth and latency mean that 5G networks are seen as crucial to the development of connected mobility. With safety being a point of concern, delivery of high volume instructions in times measured in milliseconds, allows vehicle to vehicle communication to ensure practical vehicle autonomy.
Industry experts are claiming the rapid advances being made in Australia provides an enormous advantage in the race to deploy autonomous and connected vehicles.
Cellular Data Vital to Australia
Australia sits oddly in world internet speeds with last months Speedtest Global Index showing it as 60th in the world for broadband data with an average download speed of 33.28 Mbps, but at 6th worldwide for mobile broadband at 56.70 Mbps.
As a large, sparsely populated country, the benefits of cellular as opposed to fixed line data are enormous.
Authored by Shane Curran
