There are tectonic shifts occurring in telecommunications infrastructure that will have a profound effect on aviation, writes MITRE’s Charles Clancy, in an article originally published in the Air Traffic Control Association’s Journal of Air Traffic Control.
The latest smartphones point to how quickly these transformations are happening. Anyone who purchased a new mobile phone in the last six months likely has support for 5G—the fifth generation of mobile telecommunications standards.
It’s difficult to understand how transformative 5G is. Once more 5G networks are up and running, phone users will begin to recognize the power of the new capabilities, which deliver vastly more data at much faster speeds. However, phones are just the beginning, and they aren’t the true customers of 5G. The Internet of Things (IoT) is where a major transformation will occur.