5G rollout accelerates digital transformation

Antwerp-based company Iristick manufactures high-tech smart glasses for industrial technologies, as well as developing the operating system they use. “Our smart glasses are mainly used for three industrial purposes,” explains CEO Johan De Geyter. “The first application is remote assistance, which is when someone allows others to see what they are seeing, either to get their help or to explain something to them. This can be useful for a surgeon in an operating theatre or for a maintenance worker on top of a wind turbine, for instance. A second application replaces paper-based procedures with smart glasses, which visually represent each step to the person wearing them. And the final application is data collection, such as order picking in a logistics process or in a lab where a lot of data needs to be collected.”

New opportunities

Smart glasses are not yet commonplace in business, but that could soon change when 5G is rolled out. “5G guarantees businesses higher bandwidth, higher responsiveness and much lower latency,” Director Innovation and Business Development at Orange Michaël Peeters explains.  “Those combined qualities will make online applications faster, better and more secure.”

A reliable wireless connection is particularly key for smart glasses. The technology involves sending large amounts of data from the glasses to the cloud edge and back at very low latency and a very high data rate. 5G is the only wireless technology that can achieve such high levels of connectivity.

5G as an accelerator

According to Michaël Peeters, 5G will accelerate these developments: “This new mobile network will be an accelerator for many other emerging technologies such as cloud and edge computing, connected vehicles, virtual and augmented reality and AI. Once 5G is widely rolled out, it will boost the digital transformation.”

Across all sectors

Peeters adds that the transformation is not limited to high-tech companies: “All sectors can innovate with 5G, including the more traditional industries. The number of potential use cases is endless, really. That’s why we opened a 5G Lab: to demonstrate the possibilities to organisations interested in new technologies and in need of inspiration.”