The dynamics of the Telecom Sector across the globe are set to change with South Korea and the United States going live with their 5G networks last month, and Australia set to follow the same next month.
For a layman, the technology will offer more capacity through better performance in crowded places, Faster Speeds for high-speed downloads and uploads for streaming and sharing on social media and Less Latency through Stream live feeds closer to real-time than ever before. 5G will transform the way we live and work, connecting devices faster at higher quality. To cater to this development, a range of new 5G-ready devices are ready to hit the market, designed to take advantage of the faster speeds and low latency that the next generation mobile network promises to deliver.
We may have thought that the 5G technology is only limited to the smartphones market but that’s not the case as PCs are also in-scope of what’s coming up, opening a whole new world of possibilities that may redefine the way we use computers. Cellular-connected PCs have been around for quite sometime, but they have only recently started to gain some traction, as smartphone chip giant Qualcomm's has helped introduce a new category of PC known as the Always Connected PC (or ACPC). These PC’s use a smartphone processor instead of a traditional computer processor powered by Intel or AMD and ACPC bring all of the creature comforts of a smartphone to the PC. The emails and notifications automatically download in the background even when the laptop is closed in standby mode, the machine turns on instantly and can last days.
In addition, with 5G technology, a faster cellular connection will translate to a more responsive connection to the cloud, meaning that high-end applications and games streamed from an online service will feel like they are running locally on your PC. But these 5G PC’s aren’t going to be cheap, at least in the beginning when the technology gets rolled out. Currently, the cheapest ACPC available for purchase in Australia is Samsung Galaxy Book 2 for $1600 whereas a wide majority of the PC’s are above $2000. We reckon that the rollout of 5G devices is still going to happen at a faster pace and the prices would begin to drop once the market gets competitive but the 5G coverage may take time and is likely to take the same amount of time when we transitioned from 3G to 4G technology in the past.
Coming onto companies that have taken the lead in 5G technology, Telstra is surely leading the race. They have started rolling out 5G across CBDs in major cities, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, with plans to extend coverage within a 2km radius of these city centres. Rollouts in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth CBDs are already well underway, with Sydney (including Parramatta) and Melbourne CBDs not too far behind. They’ve also already launched 5G in most of the Gold Coast metro area, as well as having much of Hobart, Launceston and Toowoomba covered. In parallel, they have partnered with some of the world’s leading 5G smartphone manufacturers to bring exclusive and first-to-market access to brand new 5G devices as soon as they are released. These exclusive partnerships mean you’ll have access to a range of 5G smartphones on the Telstra mobile network before any other Australian mobile operator, when those devices are released in the first half of 2019.
The company claims to be 5G ready right now. They started rolling out 5G technology across Australia back in August, and they’ve been working from that time with major mobile brands and leading manufacturers of 5G smartphones to bring you these innovative devices first, as well as giving you a variety of products to choose from.
To summarize, as an investor, the telecom sector itself is entering a promising phase and if you are holding Tesltra shares, it’s time to be patient with them to get lucrative returns. While other major players like Optus, TPG and Vodafone are pulling up their socks to enter the competition.
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