The 5G future: Less is more

In 2016, in line with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the mobile industry as a whole committed to working toward achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. As the mobile industry integrates and converges seamlessly with other aspects of the IT landscape, the entire technology industry is shifting to a focus on optimizing energy efficiency and reducing their carbon footprint at the same time as delivering exceptional and uncompromising performance and user experiences to more users, more devices - faster than ever.

This balance may finally level out with 5G technology. As global operators roll out their 5G networks, they are conquering the tricky trade off of performance improvement versus cost and resource expense. With the new business models and real-time use cases 5G promises to enable, we know 5G is more than just the next-generation network. It’s also paving a path in which operators as well as content and service providers can expect to do more with less. The level of investment will be steep, but 5G capacity and latency gains will more than offset the costs while allowing for:

• maximizing network efficiency and concurrent user capacity, leading to a demand for fewer resources for both financial and environmental savings
• focusing on power efficiency and technology for less expensive electricity costs and power from renewable sources; 5G is purported to use less energy than 4G despite the predicted 1,000 times greater data transmission expected over 5G
• expanding on the environmentally friendly potential of IoT devices and real-time data across industries to identify and operationalize efficiencies and savings

Eyes on the green prize

5G hype has led the world to believe that the possibilities are endless, and with time, these possibilities will begin to unfold. In the meantime, however, it’s important to work with what 5G can actually deliver and how it can be made to deliver a lean and green, high-performance content delivery experience. 

Varnish Software’s view on energy-efficient, high-performance content delivery involves adopting and fine-tuning software that helps make the most of internet connectivity (whether 5G or otherwise) to support high-performance content delivery, cost efficiencies and a future-oriented, sustainable outlook. This includes: 

• Intelligent caching technology to maximize capacity of network resources
• Caching at the edge to achieve real-time and near-no-latency responsiveness
• Ensuing resilience and redundancy - do much more with less, seamlessly

You can learn more about 5G and the green future as well as how Varnish can help in our new e-book, How green and efficient can 5G be?, takes a deeper look at how the upsides of 5G technology can counteract the possible downsides, helping to gain energy efficiency while delivering both better performance and greater resource efficacy to contribute to a lighter environmental footprint.