5G in Bangladesh: with hopes, with challenges

 Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission  (BTRC)  has lately announced that it will give licenses to mobile operators to roll out 5G services in the band spectrum of 2.6-3.5 GHz by the first quarter of 2020 after the guidelines have been drafted.

The stark difference is that 5G brings the speed of the network (up to 10Gbps) compared to 4G (up to 100Mbps) which implies it is almost 100 times faster than 4G.

5G is indeed not an evolutionary upgrade but a revolutionary upgrade to the existing wireless technologies. It can usher a lot of benefits in our country.

The health sector of our country can leverage a lot from the ultra-high-speed of the 5G network. For instance, it can be used to transmit large volumes of medical files like a report of an MRI scan (up to 1GB) or an emergency diagnosis to a skilled specialist from a very remote place within a matter of a few seconds. According to a Market Research Future study, 5G will also boost telemedicine with a compound annual growth of 16.5% from 2017 to 2023

Agricultural processes can be automated and monitored efficiently by using 5G services due to their high speed. Furthermore, farming can be enhanced by the usage of 5G collars, drones and sensors. A UK initiative called 5G RuralFirst has already successfully accomplished such tasks.

We are currently going through the 4th industrial revolution (IR 4.0). Integrating the likes of machine learning automation by IoT is the key to progress further. Here in Bangladesh, the industrial sector is booming, especially the assembling industries. With a combination of 5G and AI, this progress can be accelerated to a great extent.

5G can also contribute greatly to saving our environment. According to Huawei 5G consumes 90% less energy to transfer data (per bit) than 4G. Furthermore, 5G base stations consume 20% less electricity than the ones of 4G. In addition to this 5G base stations have sleeping modes which allow the base stations to operate at lower power when the demand is low. Of late a Canadian study shows that the current carbon emission due to ICT is 3.5% of the total emissions which is expected to rise to 14% by 2040. Therefore 5G is kind of like a must to thwart such increment.

In a recent seminar titled “Seminar on 5G in Bangladesh” held at IEB, Dhaka on 16th October 2019 Posts and Telecommunication Minister Mustafa Jabbar said, “5G is not only related to telecom services, but it will also help boost digitization and automation in every sector.”

However, some challenges do remain to deploy this technology. Its cost is approximately 4-5 times higher (according to a UK study) than 4G and a very skilled workforce is needed to operate it. We hope that such hurdles will be overcome and we will soon join the likes of the US, UK and China to become a 5G enabled nation.

  

                                                                                                                    Engr. Md. Abdur Rashid

    Director (Admin & Finance), NAPD

 

The writer is an Oracle Certified Professional, trainer, and PhD Fellow in BUP and can be reached at ‘rashid.eee.cse@gmail.com’.

Comments

  1. Dear Reader,
    This is the first blog posting. Please read put your comments.

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  2. Extraordinary and informative writing.

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  3. Very informative writing, honorable sir. We can use this as future reference sir, with your kind permission sir.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very informative writing sir. Hope we will get more that types Writing sir.

    ReplyDelete

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