For decades communications and computing industries have had only limited relationships to each other. Even
today for example, most personal computers do not connect directly to a cellular network only accessing the Internet through embedded Wi-Fi.
On the other hand, fewer than 500 big data centers effectively govern the critical computer calculations of the modern world. These data centers run by
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and their Chinese counterparts transmit massive information over thousands of miles at nearly the speed of light to and from businesses through fiber optic cables.
Yet close to three decades after the Internet became the critical commercial medium, we still do not have really high-speed broadband to every home. Moreover,
the concentration of influence in the owners of these data centers justly gives cause for concern.
But the
break-out of newly robust competition and innovation is near at hand.
The formula is 5G meets AI, producing brave
new world.
The United States might ban Chinese firms, but whether we like it or not, the rest of the world will not. To keep up with the pace of
change in China and compete worldwide, all American firms need distributed connected computing to be pervasively deployed in our country.
The next
evolution in wireless 5G, or the fifth generation of digital wireless technology launched on my watch at the FCC will expand the data carrying capacity of wireless networks by as much as 1000 times. Millions of sensors measuring
devices with radios will record the observable world, watching traffic patterns, measuring greenhouse gas emissions, monitoring heart rates, tracking robots in dangerous industrial operations.
Networks built for 5G will gather all this information and transmit it probably less than a mile away, in milliseconds, where computers resembling the big
centralized data centers, but at smaller scale, will apply the mathematical calculations generally known as artificial intelligence (AI).
This
number-crunching will enable the seemingly magical instructions and predictions that are the essence of AI: redirecting traffic, spotting environmental problems, sending someone to the hospital before the heart attack, making the robots do the hard
work.
These services must be created close to where the information is obtained because the results of AI calculations have to be delivered to the point
of use in milliseconds even at the speed of light information cannot be sent thousands of miles, analyzed, and then sent back in time to obtain factory efficiency or save a life.
For this reason, innovators in computing and communications businesses, aware their industries are at last on a collision course, say these mini-data centers
are at the edge of networks.
This edge, where 5G and AI meet, is new ground for doubling, tripling, probably quadrupling the size of
Americas information industries. Barely perceptible now, this new ecosystem would be wide open for competition and innovation.
Big cable, existing
wireless firms, and many other new entrants will have tremendous opportunities to create and capture value as they enable distributed connected computing the name for converged computing and communications. These developments will stimulate
cable and fiber-optic firms to build high speed broadband to every residence, as well as generate wireless alternatives.