5G Will Lead to a Decentralized Workforce

The concept of a decentralized workforce, one in which employees effectively collaborate without being physically present in the same office or work area, has tantalized businesses—as well as many workers—for years. Yet despite rapid advancements in Internet and mobile technologies, the decentralized workforce has yet to reach its full potential, hampered by the bandwidth, security, latency, and connectivity issues associated with existing cellular and Wi-Fi services.The imminent arrival of 5G technology promises to sweep away these concerns. Over time (likely several years) 5G is expected to provide a ubiquitous, reliable and secure broadband service capable of supporting business applications ranging all the way up to virtual reality.5G technology promises to increase the already rapid pace of workforce decentralization. For all types of remote workers, video, conference-calling and collaboration will become the norm for all types of remote workers. "We have already started to see customer support roles transition to work-from-home, and this will just enable other job types to do the same," predicted Marc Enzor, a consultant at IT repair and service firm Geeks 2 You. 5G could eventually support speeds up to 10 Gbps. At that point, even remote workers who need to access massive amounts of data rapidly should be able to work effectively from almost anywhere. "With low latency and high speeds, even Autocad engineers will be able to work from home," Enzor noted.