Over the last few years, smart home technology has revolutionised the way we live at home and according to PWC’s White Paper, Connected Home 2.0, 10.8bn will be spent on smart home devices in the UK in 2019. But despite this, a recent survey we carried out into the connected home highlighted consumer frustration with smart home technology.
Consumers cited all sorts of problems – from not being able to get their smart home technology to connect to each device and talk to each other; not having an idea of how to work it all works; being worried about security; and seeing little perceived benefit or value in the technology. Whilst this may sound negative, this presents a huge opportunity for 5G to boost further appliance adoption and showcase the future possibilities in the home.
There’s been a lot of hype around 5G, but I believe 5G is a transformative technology for the home, as it’s spearheading a multi-dimensional world connecting appliances, brands and people in real time with its fast bandwidth and reduced latency. Take a look around your home. There’s already numerous appliances that rely on a strong wireless connection to work – iPads, virtual assistants, laptops – and without it everything comes to a halt. 5G will provide an alternative to fixed wireless internet making things connect quickly, nicely and simply. From rural areas where broadband speeds are poor to urban areas where speeds can suffer from congestion; 5G will enhance the possibilities for a smarter home.
This will pave the way for 5G-enabled fully integrated living spaces that adjust to the needs of each member of the family, changing the way people entertain, consume media, use their utilities, communicate and cook. Virtual assistants like Alexa and Google Home are only the start and we’ve seen a fraction of what personal assistants are capable of. Google announced at CES earlier this year that it wants to make its Assistant the focal point of a consumer’s life; in the home, in the car and on mobile devices. 5G will be that enabler.
Layer on top of this the possibilities of 5G-enabled in-home augmented and virtual reality for cooking. Imagine Delia standing next to you showing you how to cook one of her recipes at the touch of a button. Sit down with your friends and family to watch a tennis match and imagine real time sports data appearing over tennis players as they hit the ball. 5G will make smart homes even smarter by unshackling developers from the speed restrictions and other issues that exist with today’s solutions where devices rely on wi-fi networks or Bluetooth connections.
5G can provide a more consistent approach, making things easier to setup and thus encouraging product development and subsequent consumer adoption. It is about future-proofing the nation and one of the most interesting effects will be the societal impact 5G will have on our aging population. 5G networks will help users age in place and blur the lines between hospital and home, better managing the healthcare of patients who require the most resources from our currently overloaded NHS.
We’ve already seen how sensor operated smart home tech can alert families to movement, so they know their elder relatives are up and about in the house and not lying there injured or worse, dead. And remote surgeries, where doctors see patients by video call, often suffer with buffering as an issue, particularly in remote locations which makes the service more difficult for vulnerable people to use. 5G will take this to a whole new level; real-time remote monitoring of medication usage; food intake levels and exercise; connecting the elderly to seamlessly operated telehealth services and tracking indicators from sleep to blood pressure and insulin levels.
5G can help power personalised, preventative and smarter care capabilities and elevate connected medicine to an unprecedented level helping elderly people live fulfilling and productive lives on their terms. This is exciting times for a growing societal issue here in the UK but let’s not underestimate the understanding we need of the health ecosystem and what it will take to implement the systems to connect to these technologies.
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