The Importance of 5G for Smart Cities and Smart Surveillance

With 5G networks slowly making their way across the world, engineers and city leaders are looking for ways to use this new technology for the benefit of all. One especially important conversation taking place right now is 5G’s place in smart surveillance and smart cities.

To offer his expertise on the topic, Rickard Barrefelt, Senior FAE Manager, EMEAI and IoT Sales Champion at TE Connectivity, joined host Tyler Kern on the Connected World podcast. Barrefelt first started as an industrial designer and developer at the company, then dove into the electronics market as an FAE, where he became a regional manager and IoT Champion soon after.

“The goal of 5G is to reduce device latency to one millisecond in order to use these communication types for actions like remote steering and remote surgery that need to adapt in real-time to what they see and feel,” Barrefelt said. He then explained that 5G connectivity will become crucial for smart cities that use outdoor smart surveillance and use information gathered from those devices to act on things that are happening.

Barrefelt also stressed the importance of looking at 5G networks as a whole, rather than only focusing on end devices like streetlights and surveillance cameras.

“The ecosystem behind 5G is critically important to meet the requirements of the consumers on the device side,” he said. “It’s important to take this into consideration when you’re planning how you’re going to build out the infrastructure of a city.”

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