5G and AR/VR: Industry use cases and impacts, explained

The impact of 5G-enabled AR/VR

5G also provides high bandwidth and low latency to mobile devices, enabling them to run AR and VR applications that deliver demonstrable business value. 5G's theoretical ability to support up to 10 Gbps data rates opens the doors to AR and VR applications that are simply not feasible on 4G and older technologies. However, device and coverage constraints can still limit usability in some situations.

5 industry use cases for 5G augmented and virtual reality

5G use cases for AR and VR are numerous and often industry-specific. They include scenarios for customer service and support, employee engagement, customer engagement and others. Let's explore five common ways AR and VR can take advantage of 5G.

1. Customer service and support

Today, most customer engagement consists of emails, phone calls or text messages with contact center agents. By taking advantage of 5G's speed, along with AR and VR applications on mobile devices, companies can provide customers with real-time guidance and demonstrations.

For example, a customer trying to assemble a complex piece of equipment can get help from AR that overlays instructions on top of the live image of the equipment captured by the camera on a mobile or wearable device. A product expert can then guide the customer toward completing the necessary steps.

Another opportunity is using AR for product demonstrations. For example, customers can use AR apps to overlay images of clothes onto images of themselves to see how they look. Or they can see how a paint color looks before applying it. Anyone looking to remodel a kitchen can view an overlay of the final design on top of their current kitchen. AR can even take measurements to ensure proper fit.

Additionally, salespeople can use the technology to walk customers through various aspects of a product before purchase. Imagine using VR goggles to take a guided tour of a new vehicle without having to visit a showroom.

In each case, combining the right hardware with 5G technologies opens possibilities for improving the customer experience and increasing sales.

2. Healthcare

The healthcare opportunities are numerous. Instructors can use VR to demonstrate new procedures or techniques to medical students, doctors and nurses remotely, wherever they are, thus saving on travel costs. Instructors can also use AR on top of live procedures to point out steps and points of interest. Or they can use VR to bring remote participants into an operating or examination room, enabling them to observe and ask questions.

For patient care, AR and VR over 5G offer opportunities to enhance telemedicine, providing healthcare professionals with the ability to conduct remote examinations, highlight areas of concern to patients and even walk patients through procedures before their appointments.

5G-enabled AR and VR devices, such as wearable glasses, enable medical care professionals to include remote experts directly in the examination room, potentially saving time, money and, ultimately, lives. Consider, for example, surgeons who run into a problem during a procedure. Using a 5G-enabled wearable device, they can easily show a remote specialist what they are seeing. The specialist can then use AR to guide the surgeon during the procedure.

3. Meetings and employee engagement

AR and VR meeting applications already exist, such as Cisco Webex integrated with the Apple Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, enabling users to join immersive, virtual reality meetings while wearing the headset. 5G expands the options for immersive meetings so that participants can join from virtually anywhere.

Employees might also use VR for virtual engagement outside of meetings, such as for social and team-building scenarios. One example is Accenture's Nth Floor project that provides a metaverse for employees to engage with one another, regardless of location.

4. Training and education

AR and VR over 5G offer the potential to deliver high-quality immersive education and training to remote participants anywhere in the world. Teaching scenarios that require in-person instruction today, such as lab experiments, can be done using VR and AR, making education more accessible and less costly.

The cost of training field personnel on new products and techniques can be reduced by eliminating the need to bring field workers to in-person training classes or dispatch trainers to conduct in-person training in the field. The use of AR and VR over 5G for training is especially attractive to industries operating in remote locations, such as mines, drilling sites and other areas that lack access to high-speed wired networks.

5. Next-generation wearable devices

Today, most wearable devices are expensive and bulky or require tethering to a mobile phone for data access and local processing. With its high data-transfer rates, 5G enables devices to take advantage of cloud-based processing and offloading of graphical tasks, potentially reducing the cost and complexity of wearables while increasing flexibility and battery life.

5G AR and VR limitations

Despite the many potential benefits of using AR and VR over 5G, limitations do exist. The biggest limitation is the availability of 5G, especially in remote areas.

The FCC currently estimates that about 96% of homes and small businesses now have access to 5G, with most having access to at least 35 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload speeds. However, dead spots are possible, and true universal coverage might require supplementing 5G with Wi-Fi.

5G availability can even be limited in urban areas, especially within buildings. And available bandwidth is likely to be limited by the number of 5G users who are all contending for network resources at any given time. 5G AR and VR applications are also likely to be constrained by the processing power and battery life of mobile devices.

The future of 5G and AR/VR

5G will continue to enable growth in AR and VR use cases in the next few years. The forthcoming rollout of 5G-Advanced and the expected arrival of 6G in the 2030s will continue to make 5G a viable WAN alternative, as well as increase the bandwidth and performance available to AR and VR-capable mobile devices.

Running AR and VR over 5G offers significant potential to deliver new and innovative capabilities to customers and employees, in addition to reducing the costs of training and customer service. Organizations should take a proactive approach to identify applicable use cases while recognizing potential constraints on the applications they envision.

Irwin Lazar is president and principal analyst at Metrigy, where he leads coverage on the digital workplace. His research focus includes unified communications, VoIP, video conferencing and team collaboration.