Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
The Covid-19 outbreak due to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (Lai et al., 2020) proved to be a pandemic that has had a seismic effect on people globally. It brought a dramatic and drastic change to the normal way living of people all over the world. To curb the spread of Covid-19, the governments implemented social distancing, lockdowns and other restrictions. The business organizations and schools had to close down, with the majority having to shift to online medium quickly. This new environment forced people to reevaluate how their everyday tasks were performed and instead pivoted them to the unconventional way which was highly dependent on telecommunication technology and networks for operational continuity and social connect (Hantrais et al., 2021).
Many business organizations and public health authorities had to rapidly launch advanced digital solutions for operational continuity while ensuring safety and health and also to support the societal well-being by keeping social interactions alive through digital mode. There was a considerable dependency upon online collaboration and learning platforms, such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, Coursera etc. which were extensively used professional exchange and learning during the lockdown globally. Similarly, for entertainment needs & social interactions, the consumers used varied platforms for example, for media & movies, the use of OTT channels Netflix, Prime, YouTube as such increased, while for social media connect platforms, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter etc., were used. Usage of multimedia sites for activities such as online gaming and sports, increased manifold during Covid-19 (Elavarasan & Pugazhendhi, 2020).
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the strong need for a robust telecommunication and high-speed broadband infrastructure which a huge capacity, to support people in their work, to learn, to shop for essential needs and socially interact while remaining safely distanced from others (Ting et al., 2020). The normal activities in offices, industries, schools, hospitals, and industries shifted to online mediums, this sudden surge in online traffic created huge burden on the existing infrastructure and networks. This was quite a difficult situation for the existing networks. They were never designed and nor capable of dealing with the huge amount of traffic being generated and the change in demand patterns because of the sudden shift to online (Abubakar et al., 2020). The telecommunication providers and network operators with existing wireless networking technologies struggled to meet the new demand. This brought into focus, the need for the deployment of even more advanced telecommunication technologies, such as 5G - the fifth generation mobile networks and beyond 5G (B5G), which can prove to be even more efficient and capable in meeting the user demands and for negating the detrimental effects of the pandemics on all sectors of economy (Boccardi et al., 2014).
5G as a technology is still in developing phase, but it presents a paradigm shift in the field of telecommunication and networks. Many countries across the globe are currently deploying 5G networks. The 5G networks have the capability to provide universal higher data speed, higher reliability, high mobility support, higher capacity, high-rate connectivity, lower latency, give massive device connectivity and overall a seamless user experience while enhancing energy efficiency (Kaur et al., 2020; Soldani et al., 2017).
According to Osseiran et al. (2014), 5G networks would be able to deliver:
- 1.
100x higher user data rate.
- 2.
100x higher number of connected devices.
- 3.
1000x higher mobile data volume per area.
- 4.
10x longer battery life - for low power massive machine communications.
- 5.
5x reduced End-to-End (E2E) latency.