Consider Juan, a good kid from a rural community. Because data is more broadly accessible and less expensive,
Juan’s parents have a mobile data plan for the family through a Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) broadband connection.
Juan can check his grades and access his assignments online before school. On the way to school, he is also able to get
some studying done on the bus through a mobile access point. While on the bus, he can share videos and notes with
classmates so they can collaborate. Thanks to the high-capacity bandwidth and low latency of 5G, content arrives
immediately, and the quality is excellent.
At school, the chemistry lab is in the basement of one of the biggest buildings in the area. It’s a massive brick edifice and everyone used to complain that you couldn’t get a signal. This year, the school installed Wi-Fi 6 and connected their network securely to their provider’s 5G enterprise service. Now Juan can seamlessly access everything he needs on campus, whether indoors or outdoors.
Later on, Juan’s world history class is taking a field trip to a historic battlefield where students use augmented reality glasses to immerse themselves in the experience while walking around outside. Juan can see what it looked and sounded like when troops were preparing for battle in the nineteenth century—a much more insightful encounter than simply reading a textbook in class.
Students like Juan also would be able to access textbooks and assignments online while traveling to and from games and other extracurricular activities. At Juan’s football game, his gear has tiny sensors that allow him to track his progress, distance covered, and fatigue throughout the game. After the game, he can access the data from the cloud and work to improve on his performance for
the next game. At the end of the night, a wireless video camera can confirm that Juan safely enters the bus and will monitor
behavior on the bus.
Devices will be able to switch between Wi-Fi 6 and 5G seamlessly and securely, so students can access networks in places where 4G LTE wouldn’t work, like the basement of remote buildings on campus, during long trips, or with augmented reality. School campuses and surrounding areas will be safer because providers will be able to monitor security cameras in remote areas.
