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Friday, December 21, 2018, 11:04
The telecom revolution that changes everything
By Wang Yuke
Friday, December 21, 2018, 11:04 By Wang Yuke

With the 5G wireless network set to make its mark in this tech-savvy community, a wide spectrum of companies, including video game operators, stand to benefit from the transformation. Wang Yuke reports. 

5G — the fifth generation of wireless networking — is almost upon us, and it’s going to revolutionize computing and network connectivity almost beyond the imagination.

Imagine traveling to a place like Jurassic Park, battling dinosaurs with a team of fellow adventurers distributed around the globe. Ian Kan, co-founder of Team Bravo — a game development startup — says 5G will be huge for the rapidly expanding population of video gamers.

Games will become physically challenging as players duck, roll and dive for cover, battling adversaries on forested hillsides or stony plains. Players will feel the blow coming in contact with their adversaries. It’ll feel like fighting real foes, predicts Kan.

“We will even virtually travel in the universe or somewhere we can never set foot in present times or even in the afterlife,” adds Kan.

Even more importantly, imagine medical surgery performed across the internet.

E-sports, an emerging digital entertainment platform with a fast growing fan base, will get an additional injection from 5G

Terence Leung, senior manager of E-sport and Youth Team of Cyberport

5G is mostly about speeds of data transmission. It means traditional Wi-Fi goes away, replaced by the much faster 5G NR (new radio) standard opening the door to “always connected services”. The potentialities for 5G have not even been fully grasped.

The 5G system uses high-frequency millimeter radio waves. These were inaccessible before because of high costs and strict government regulations.

The new generation network comes just in time to support the ever-expanding gaming market. The 5G system is over 10 times faster than 4G, and it has 50 times lower latency, or video lag that we encounter on 4G. What does it mean? Data will go from one device to another much faster. Take, for example, downloading a high-resolution movie (8 gigabytes). On a 3G network that’ll take 26 hours. On a 4G network, you’ll have to wait six minutes. Using 5G, it takes four seconds.

Kan, himself a competitive game player, joins the outcry over problems with third and fourth-generation networks (3G and 4G). They couldn’t handle the data.

Games would “stick” or lag (which is known as latency), when the action got too hot and heavy and the networks couldn’t process all the data.

“A lag or stutter pretty much ruins the experience and enjoyment of a game,” said Kan. “When I was fully engaged, I would be furious when there was a lag or stutter.”

“It felt like someone had taken something away and there was nothing I could do.

“You know you’re better than your opponent but you still lose because of bad luck! So, I’d smash mouses and keyboards. I’ve broken several.”

The video game industry is serious business, earning almost US$109 billion in 2017, according to 2017 Year In Review Report by SuperData. It provides jobs for thousands of programmers, animators, game designers and writers. So, it’s a big show. 

Serious connectivity issues

The latency, lag problem in 3G and 4G took its toll on Kan’s business. “An important person approached us, intending to introduce our game, DrillsVR, outside of Hong Kong. We tried to demonstrate the game on the phone, but 4G didn’t support loading the stage or ‘map’ because of the high number of data packages. We had serious connectivity issues. The person opted out (of investing in) our game and we lost a great opportunity to expand our business.”

Kan’s feeling is echoed by a 2018 study by Ericsson, the telecommunications company.

The study showed that lags causing visual stutter in virtual reality games strain the gamers emotionally and intellectually. For competition players, that’s serious. Ericsson found that the drain on players’ morale would be the same as if they had aged five to ten years. That means slower reflexes, diminished ability to react to situations and, for a professional, loss of money and standing.  

The study also found that online gamers are twice as likely to quit because of a network delay that interrupts the game for as little as 500 additional milliseconds — just half a second.

Kan says he feels worst when he hits a lag when he has teammates counting on him. CS: GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) is a competitive first-person shooter that, he says, requires a lot of teamwork.  

“There were times when I let down my team, not because of my underperforming but because of server issues.”

Most games by Team Bravo are action shooters. During action-intense games, loads of data are generated back and forth between devices and servers. It is essential to have a consistently fast and reliable network, immune to disturbances, to ensure a seamless teamwork and communication between rivals in the game. Every millisecond counts. 5G will ensure that seamless connection with no more lagtime.

E-sports, an emerging digital entertainment platform with a fast growing fan base, will get an additional injection from 5G, projects Terence Leung, senior manager of E-sport and Youth Team of Cyberport. Despite having a young market in Hong Kong, e-sports has attracted more than 300,000 players. In Hong Kong, the 5G network allows e-sports players and their broadcast audiences a smooth experience that they can enjoy only under wireless settings today, he says.

Team Bravo’s Ian Kan says they’ll be designing more virtual reality shooting games that will offer immersive and realistic gaming experience under the 5G network. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Angry disputes

Having a stable, fast internet is the core of a successful e-sports event, reflects Kan, whose startup held some mini e-sports competitions between leagues from Hong Kong and countries like Thailand. Network latency seriously interfered, changing scores and raising angry disputes. There was a case of a dispute over scoring during an e-sports competition between Hong Kong and Taiwan, echoes Leung.

“With the increasing player base and different genres of games which require mass data transfer, being out of sync will definitely negatively affect players. Mobile e-sports events, such as PUBG, require 100 players to connect to the same server to compete. A strong internet connection is essential to provide a fair environment for the players to compete in.”

The applications of 5G network are unlimited, and not even fully assessed, remarks Winnie Tang, a 5G expert from the University of Hong Kong. The higher technology will penetrate almost every aspect of life, she says. One likely popular application is the smart home — a home connected to a centralized system, like an all-round personal assistant. It’ll manage and coordinate household chores, she cites. “It starts with the wake-up call in the morning, reports on the weather, updates the news, reviews work schedules, and suggests the best route to get to work. When the ‘master’ is out of the house, the robot will take care of the household chores.”

“These will all be done in a coordinated manner, in real-time — powered by the 5G network. There are startups using augmented reality for business meetings in branches spread over international boundaries. “With a 5G network, user experience will be much improved with the interaction among participants feeling more natural,” Tang noted.

Remote digital healthcare service is achievable through a fully realized 5G network, offers Peter Yeung Tin-chung, head of ICT Clusters at Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation. He looks ahead to surgery done remotely — doctors won’t even have to be present with the patient. Medical professionals will instruct robotic arms to carry out surgery in real time. The low-latency aspect of 5G will allow sensory data, generated by the robot, to be transmitted to the doctors. That will ensure, simultaneously, that surgeons in remote locations get precise feedback, allowing them in turn to give prompt and accurate instructions. 

The 5G system will extend to mission critical communications for emergency services. It will have application in disaster areas, assisting first responders and rescuers. Here too, the absence of network latency is the key.

HKSTP is committed to creating a 5G network testing bed where private companies can try out internet of things gadgets. In the 5G environment, companies can test their prototypes and make adjustments as needed.  

HKSTP launched an indoor 5G application test bed in its Smart City Innovation Centre in July last year. Now it’s moving to create an outdoor environment for testing 5G communication. The outdoor lab is essential to prototype testing because 5G networks are easily interfered by high buildings, and other physical obstacles prevalent in a densely populated city.

Companies to benefit

Yeung believes the 5G test beds will benefit many companies in the process of developing new applications. He cites HK Jiuling Technology, which develops surveillance applications. Video surveillance for outdoor security relies on keen sensors to capture objects’ features in fine detail. The more detailed the information is about a person, the greater volume of data generated. The detailed information hinges on consistently reliable network transference in real time.

China Mobile Hong Kong, a main local mobile network operator, already took advantage of the outdoor pilot program to test its communication network under the 5G environment.

The company also cooperates with developers assisting with IoT applications, affording them a 5G-fitted working space, says Alex Koo, senior marketing manager of CMHK.

Nevertheless, the potentially high cost involved in 5G network development remains a deterrent. A major consideration that will accelerate or deter 5G development is: What will 5G do for the business world? Tang points out that a dense network with improved speed and coverage capabilities requires three to 10 times more antennae, base stations and fiber-optic cables to connect everything. The energy consumption alone is 10 times greater than that under the current set-up.

“Therefore, mobile operators are struggling to justify the business case,” Tang stresses. GSMA, a mobile industry group, did a survey of 750 telecom companies. The big question put to senior management asked what the most salient impediment to delivering 5G is. More than half replied — the lack of a clear business case.

“The industry group expected that 62 percent of Asia’s mobile connections will still be running on 4G networks and only 14 percent on 5G by 2025,” Tang notes.

The current 4G may be fast enough to stream movies and enjoy day-to-day online activities on mobile devices but, often, we may have to sacrifice quality for less waiting. But, thanks to 5G network, we won’t have to make a compromise between speed and quality and can fully immerse ourselves in the virtual and augmented reality worlds.

Contact the writer at jenny@chinadailyhk.com


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