The point of 5G is to allow carriers to serve more data with the same amount of spectrum. Usually that leads to consumer benefits in the form of a cheaper rate per megabyte. That's basically it.
I disagree. I think the purpose of 5G is to allow carriers (formerly known as The Phone Company) to sell value-added services to other companies large and small. IoT, video-on-demand, Big Data, AI, automation, etc. The bandwidth story is the distraction.
I think the term is more use cases rather than value added services.
Parts of the 5GC specifications such as URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication) allow for far more safety critical solutions to be back-hauled over a mobile network. Autonomous driving, critical industrial control systems and remote surgery solutions are some I've seen.
Even standalone 5G networks are now specified, they use unlicensed spectrum and give you the freedom to not even include a carrier in the equation at all.
IoT devices are cheap and tiny and so are rarely on the latest cellular standards. Your typical IoT use case is smart metering and logistics - hardly big data users.
In most of those other use cases, the carrier serves as basically a big dumb pipe.
Yes and the cost models are being driven down even more by Cat-M and NB-IoT.
I've been working in the IoT space for some time and there's now a real shift into these technologies for large scale telemetry deployments like you described. The shutdown of 2G networks across the world have ruled out a lot of the cheaper modems.
There are other benefits, such as enabling a larger set of solutions to be battery powered and for an increased lifespan.
High density, sparse traffic solutions like you described are often termed as mMTC (Massive Machine Type Communications). The main benefits to 5G in these regards focus on the mobile network and their ability to manage a higher volume of subscribers and therefore lower their costs to the end customer.
In newer LTE standards there is LTE-M, which is a special lower power mode. So while they are not big data users they do benefit from lower power usage.
Even without LTE-M, devices that will use LTE will be more power efficient
That story was the same for 3g and 4g. And why would they want to sell ‘IoT’ to ‘other companies’ while the poor consumers foot the bill? That’s just conspiracy theory.
It also allows wireless providers to directly compete with cable for home internet access. It could also help in many rural areas that still lack cable.
Guess who pays?