5g Is Unleashing the Fourth Industrial Revolution—here's What it Means for Legal Systems

• Citation: Vol. 3 No. 6
• Publication year: 2020

Louis Lehot and Ethan Floyd^*

We are only now beginning to experience what 5G can do, and the need for legal services in data protection, health, security, and cyber-security, among others, will continue to increase exponentially. The authors of this article discuss how 5G will impact law and policy at all levels of government.

5G technology delivers wireless communication speeds exponentially faster than any previous generation—speeds comparable to delivery via fiber-optic cables. Companies are racing to make it commercially available everywhere. 5G is the first-ever mobile technology capable of extending the reach of broadband wireless services to connected devices. According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association ("GSMA"), there will be 25 billion connected Internet of Things ("IoT") devices by 2025. Ubiquitous 5G service will drive radical changes in the way we communicate and live.

5G promises to supercharge the IoT, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality, smart cities, mission-critical manufacturing, 3D videos, remote healthcare, and regenerative medicine. Each of these and other 5G-enabled applications could change the shape of legal, risk, and regulatory environments, and collectively, they will usher in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While previous industrial revolutions used water and steam power to mechanize production, electricity to create mass production, and electronics and IT to automate production, this revolution, powered by 5G wireless technology, will fuse them all and blur the lines between physical, digital, and biological spheres. Indeed, according to a recent Harris Williams report, the average number of devices and connections per capita in North America alone is expected to grow by 63 percent, up from 8.2 to 13.4 by 2023. The Fourth Industrial

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Revolution promises to create velocity, enable unlimited scope, and manifest a profound impact on our systems, transforming how we produce, manage, and govern our world and ourselves.

As societies around the world struggle to cope with the global COVID-19 pandemic, the rush to rework and study remotely put massive pressure on the capacity of existing telecommunications networks, whether broadband, fiber-optic, 4G LTE or legacy 3G or even 2G wireless networks. According to Verizon, between March 12 and March 19 alone, voice usage was up 25 percent on its network, and total web activity was up 22 percent over the same period. According to Harris Williams, during the same period, Verizon's usage patterns showed a 12 percent increase in demand for bandwidth-intensive streaming video services.

5G Will Accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Beyond addressing the pressing need for additional bandwidth, 5G should support and engender new consumer and business applications with its near real-time connectivity. Its lower latency and more reliable speeds will allow for faster transmission of massive data streams, even in extreme conditions. With speed expected to be 10x faster (or more) than 4G, 5G will support a broader range of sensors, wearables, and devices.

As 5G is rolled out, artificial intelligence ("AI") will be supercharged, hastening the transformation of applications. Instead of AI living in the cloud (think, slow), AI will become distributed, living on the edge or on IoT devices themselves. When quantum computing is added to the mix, AI on the edge will become a whole new thing.

In the healthcare industry, for example, 5G will support tremendous expansion of preventative and monitoring practices via connected devices, whether wearable or not. While devices are already used to track everything from steps to sleep as well as blood glucose and...