With the start of 2020 consumers everywhere are starting to wonder where is the 5G they were promised? Unfortunately, for the United States, the infrastructure needed to provide the ultra-fast connection of 5G still needs to be built. This is because the millimeter wavelength needed for 5G requires more small cell towers in highly populated areas to keep the signals moving.

These millimeter waves are estimated to be almost 600 times faster than 4G but are easily interrupted by physical barriers. This means in highly populated areas things as common as trees and buildings could interrupt the signal. The easiest way for wireless providers to keep our signal from ‘dropping’ is to have more ‘towers’ closer to each other for the signal to bounce between quickly. These new towers can’t be 100+ foot towers on every corner, instead the industry is turning to small cell sites to be able cover a dense area without being an eyesore.

These small, almost undetectable towers and antennas are necessary in areas with high data needs and depending on the density of barriers in the area, some locations may need a significant amount of small cell sites. This is great news for the U.S economy in that an estimated additional $500 billion in U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) and the addition 3 million jobs across the telecommunication industry. These jobs will range from manufacturing, construction, surveyors and real estate attorneys for finding and securing new small cell sites. The deployment of 5G is estimated to create 1,000 jobs for a city like Beaumont, Texas with a population of 118,000, imagine the number of jobs created in some of our major cities like Dallas, Houston and Austin. The benefits of 5G don’t stop at just the job creation, permitting, and licensing for small cell deployment will benefit our cities and counties with additional revenue.

At Aria Services we are excited to help with the deployment of 5G in our home state of Texas and reaching nationwide. Aria was built on recruiting and hiring accomplished engineers to assist with the creation of unobtrusive and sturdy small cell structures, and assist your team with placement and reinforcement of new antennas. However, we don’t simply hand off a drawing and move on, we have a team of professional engineering project managers available to bring the drawing to life. Our team is remotely based throughout the Gulf Coast, and Midwest allowing is to easily to deploy an engineer to any site to work with you to bring your ideal IoT or 5G project to life.

This all seems like a win-win for consumers who should benefit from faster wireless internet speeds, new jobs and additional tax revenue, but this process has been slow to take off in America due to the vast differences in regulations between each community. Currently carriers and tower owners are often going city by city working with local and state governments to create a small cell plan for each city. This is time consuming, and costly and can delay deployment in cities with less friendly permitting process and higher fees, but the Federal Communication Commission is working with states and the telecommunication community to try to help ease some of these barriers to help speed up the 5G revolution for America. So, as consumers enter 2020 the only thing that is holding back the internet of things, new jobs, an additional $275 billion investment from telecom industry, is simply red tape surrounding the placement of small cell sites in their community.
https://newsroom.accenture.com/content/1101/files/Accenture_5G-Municipalities-Become-Smart-Cities.pdf