Korea's three mobile carriers began to offer commercialized fifth-generation services for the first time in the world Saturday.
The technical characteristics of 5G are super speed, super connectivity and super-low delay. Its transmission speed is 20 times faster than that of the existing 4G long-term evolution (LTE) and its delay time is one-10th of the previous generation service. The number of connected devices per square kilometer will also expand from 100,000 to 1 million.
The opening of the 5G era is significant in that it could provide an opportunity for Korea to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution by making the most of these technical advances.
Korea has always taken the lead in the evolution of the global telecom industry. The nation commercialized the 2G service based on the code division multiple access (CDMA) system in 1996, popularizing mobile phones. In 2011, the country launched the 4G service with the LTE technology that used two frequency bands, which drastically increased transmission speed to open the era of data communication. 5G, by using the VHF band, has expanded the data aisle up to 100 times, from 10 MHz-20 MHz to 100 MHz-1 GHz.
For instance, it took 32 hours for 2G services to download a 2GB high-definition film, but the time was reduced to 16 seconds in the 4G era. The 5G finishes it in 0.8 seconds. Based on such fast and exquisite data communication, 5G will provide core infrastructure for realizing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, based on artificial intelligence, the internet of things, autonomous vehicles and virtual reality.
At stake is how to make 5G services lead the information revolution and create new growth engines. Samsung Electronics and Huawei are competing to develop 5G cellphones and peripheral devices, and the Chinese company has already landed in the Korean market. Competition has already begun over standardization and content, too.
In the worst-case scenario, however, Korea could end up the proverbial case of “one man sows but another man reaps.” For example, local medical professionals will likely have to use foreign content to offer telemedicine service. All this shows why the nation badly needs an industrial policy change to suit 5G services.