“ The promise of 5G is to use this technology as the enabling glue to make a digital society , both commercially within key industries , but also from a societal point of view ”
— Colin Willcock , Chairman of the Board , 5G IA
explained that “ while we ’ re still very much at the beginning of the 5G story , we have just had a call for project proposals to look beyond 5G . We have created the first versions of the 5G standard and are now in the process of evolving the technology to fully support the non-telecoms vertical industries . However , the network technology evolution will not stop with 5G and we want to make sure that we start looking at 6G early enough to ensure Europe can retain its leadership role in this domain ”.
When it comes to working with organisations to drive transformation and innovation within their operations , Dr . Willcock explained that , “ obviously digital transformation is at the heart of what the 5G IA does . We are trying to bring leadership in digital transformation and 5G technology to Europe and then deploy that technology across the world . We ’ ve got dozens of industries working together to show how digital transformation can help and trying to show that it is worth investing in . So , it ’ s very much at the heart of what we ’ re doing , and I think we can claim quite a lot of success in driving digital transformation through the 5G PPP collaborative projects . These projects have also focused on other key transformational areas like standardisation .”
One key element Dr . Willcock believes is often underrated is the concept of culture and mindset . “ The problem is that industries are often only interested in short term technological solutions – this often leads them to apply the solutions of yesterday to the problems of tomorrow – this is often true when they are considering communications
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