The coronavirus epidemic has not only brought down the global economy, but has also spurred some high-tech industries - 5G mobile networks, robotics, cloud data systems and artificial intelligence. Some data in this area was shared by the Chinese company Huawei.
During the pandemic, network traffic around the world increased sharply - only by 40% in the first week, which is not surprising - people began to hang on the Internet in self-isolation. The network load time schedule has also changed. The intervals of 8: 00-12: 00 and 14: 00-16: 00 were added to the usual peak at 20: 00-22: 00, and the main peak falls on the morning hours - thanks to distance education. The second peak comes from remote workers. For example, in China, 200 million students study and another 200 million people work online. According to China Mobile, traffic in distance education has grown eightfold. The epidemic also affected the geographic dynamics of traffic - in business areas it fell by 59%, but grew by 32% in residential areas compared to 2019.
With the abolition of quarantine, traffic will decrease, but it will not be the same, as can be seen from statistics from those areas of China that have returned to normal life. At the peak of the closure of Chinese cities, traffic increased 1.8 times, but after the opening of cities it still remained 30% -40% higher than before the pandemic.
Teleconference.
Until now, a killer-application for 5G networks has not appeared in the world. Many associated the need for the transition to a new format with the proliferation of unmanned vehicles. But it turned out that with the rapid construction of new infectious hospital buildings, only 5G networks can quickly provide the necessary speed and coverage. Thus, in two new hospitals in Wuhan, 5G networks were deployed in just 72 hours, and in just seven provinces, 1,951 new base stations were installed in the same time.
During the pandemic, new technologies emerged in Chinese hospitals: intelligent robots that collected throat swabs; artificial intelligence-controlled systems for remote temperature measurement; interdepartmental cloud platforms for monitoring and managing the fight against the epidemic; diagnostic systems using artificial intelligence, providing a complete decoding of computed tomography of the lungs with visualization in seconds. All of this required high-speed Internet access without delays, which only 5G networks could provide in new hospitals.
Robots in hospitals.
Transport and medical robots, which during the epidemic began to appear en masse in Hubei, Xih and Jinyintang hospitals, became other consumers of the gigantic data sets. For example, surveillance robots with remote temperature sensing, disinfection and spraying functions that required upstream bandwidth of 30 Mbps with a delay of no more than 200 ms. It is clear that it was not possible to develop them from scratch in such a compact timeframe - the alteration of patrol robots went into action. There are also cheaper counterparts with only disinfection functions.
Promotional video:
There were also transport robots in the corridors of hospitals, transporting medicines and food. In some cities, self-driving cars were allowed to deliver food for medical staff. All of these robots and drones couldn't function without 5G networks.
It is clear that these new robots did not play an important role in the fight against the pandemic (as opposed to the powerful information networks supported by artificial intelligence), but investments in these technologies during the pandemic gave a powerful impetus to their development. Moreover, they are not going to curtail investments in them, but on the contrary: the "New Infrastructure" program adopted in China provides for seven main industries for accelerated development with powerful support from the state: 5G networks, industrial Internet, high-speed intercity transportation, data processing centers, artificial intelligence systems, high-voltage energy and high-speed charging stations for electric vehicles. The total budget for these programs will be 17 trillion yuan ($ 2.4 trillion). “Investing in the future is never too early and will continue despite the fading of the pandemic,”- said in the message of the Chinese government.
Alexander the Greek