This week’s announcement from Spark that its trial 5G network had gone live was good news for Spark, good news for supplier Huawei and particularly good news for the Emirates Americas Cup team, which gets exclusive access to the network.
According to Spark: “The reduced latency and higher bandwidth of 5G means Emirates Team New Zealand can now livestream data and video back to engineers and designers at the base straight off the new AC75 boat, Te Aihe,while it’s sailing. Real time access to the data gives Emirates Team New Zealand a design advantage in preparing for the America’s Cup racing.”
The comments from the Emirates Team’s head of design, Dan Bernasconi, were a ringing endorsement of 5G and confirmed much of what the 5G community has been spruiking for months: that the low latency and high bandwidth of 5G will support applications that just cannot be supported on today’s 3G and 4G mobile networks.
“Now we have 5G on the water, there are hundreds of real time data streams such as boat speed, ride height, and hydraulic pressure coming off the water and back to our design team at the base,” Bernasconi said.
“Our team can do progressive design and development work during the day while the boat is sailing allowing our design-thinking to evolve much faster. We were never able to do this before 5G.”
And he had more to say about the competitive advantage 5G technology has given the team. The race is still 15 months away but nevertheless, Bernasconi says, time is of the essence as the team heads into “the busy period of testing on Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf over the spring and summer months.”
He says the team now has “the advantage of time for testing on the race area and the advantage of trialling 5G for our data analysis ahead of the America’s Cup in March 2021. … Using 5G … buys us one of the most precious commodities in the America’s Cup – time.”
Every team has the same amount time, but how they can use it matters greatly. As Bernasconi says: “The America’s Cup is as much a technology race as a yacht race. We know that in order to win the Cup we need to win the innovation race. Using 5G allows us to explore more design options…”
Spark CEO Jolie Hodson said Spark wanted to “encourage businesses to begin thinking about how they can prepare for the future of Spark 5G.”
If Bernasconi’s comments are anywhere near true and not just hype for the press release the other Americas Cup teams may well be thinking just that, because for them 5G is the future, not the here-and-now.
You see, as Spark’s press release says: “This 5G trial is a private service that is only available to Emirates Team New Zealand and is isolated from the rest of Spark’s network,” which if course does not offer 5G.
Neither, as yet, does any other mobile network in New Zealand So these many benefits conferred by 5G as the Emirates team seeks to fine tune its boat design are simply not available to any of its competitors.
2Degrees has, reportedly, said it is in no rush to launch 5G. Vodafone 5G launches in December in “select locations across Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.” Whether that provides comparable coverage of Auckland Harbour and ‘levels the playing field’ for Americas Cup competitors remains to be seen.
