It seems like we’ve been hearing about the imminent arrival of 5G for years. What’s different this time around? Verizon recently activated 5G in Houston and three other US cities, marking the first-ever 5G commercial deployments in the US.
According to VentureBeat, “Verizon’s offering is an end-to-end 5G solution, including the necessary wireless hardware to deliver next-generation wireless speeds to home broadband users. The carrier is promising typical 300Mbps and peak 1Gbps connection speeds to customers.”
So why is this news significant? For the city of Houston, and ultimately the rest of the country, 5G will radically change the way consumers and businesses access the internet, which means IT delivery methods will shift toward systems that provide increased bandwidth and performance, and local compute and network power.
5G for Consumers
For consumers, 5G offers new paths to connectivity, giving many a choice in internet providers, and delivering broadband for the first time to others in underserved geographies. According to CNN Business, there are roughly 19 million Americans who currently do not have access to a broadband provider. Houston, as well as many other major urban centers in the US, has several underserved neighborhoods. 5G will allow mobile carriers to compete with cable companies, offering affordable broadband options to customers.
Houston is an Innovation Hub: The Local Impact of 5G
On the commercial side, Houston is already seen as a hub for innovation. But now, with the initial roll-out of 5G, which is expected to serve as the backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT), Houston will be doubling down on its positioning as a great place to start or grow a business.
While energy production remains the mainstay for the Houston economy, the city’s business landscape has diversified significantly over the past decades. In addition to ongoing oil and gas exploration and basic petroleum refining, Houston is now cited among the national leaders in a variety of verticals, including medical research and health care delivery, high-technology (computer, aerospace, environmental, etc.), international import and export, commercial fishing, film and media, and banking and finance.
IoT will reshape these and all industries, from the traditional to the most future-forward. For several years now, Houston has played host to IoT-oriented events such as the annual IoT in Oil and Gas Conference. And global technology players recognize Houston as a city that is oriented towards IoT innovation. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it is investing in Houston as a city of focus for IoT business development in the tech sector.
All of these industries will benefit from the blazing speeds promised by 5G, and investment in new businesses whose models depend on ultra-low latency will pour in to the city. The anticipated proliferation of IoT networks, with the voluminous increase in devices collecting and transmitting data over these networks, will require computing to move to the edge of the internet, closer to where endpoints are generating the data that these IoT companies will be processing. For such enterprises depending on ultra-low latency data processing, edge computing in the heart of the city is a critical requirement for modern infrastructure delivery.
Netrality offers state-of-the-art colocation in the heart of Houston’s metro business district at 1301 Fannin. This unique property provides reliable interconnection, exceptional resilience, absolute neutrality, and unrivaled flexibility, all while delivering to its tenants direct network access to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico. 1301 Fannin, like all of Netrality’s urban-located facilities, features a fiber-dense, network-rich Meet Me Room that delivers the ultra-low latency, high performance, network reliability and redundancy required by today’s most innovative companies.
Houston is shaping up as a hub of 5G innovation, and Netrality is there to offer the unrivaled interconnection infrastructure and edge computing support to power new business development. To learn more Netrality’s Houston data center, 1301 Fannin, contact us.
