5G has been identified in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan as a “new area of growth”, and Shenzhen-based Huawei is currently the front runner in the race to supply 5G gear to telecoms companies around the world.

The US knows it is lagging behind.

“The country that owns 5G will own many of these innovations and set standards for the rest of the world … that country is currently not likely to be the United States,” the paper concluded.

Broadly speaking, the applications of 5G technology could be endless, turning the most mundane of devices smart and translating everyday occurrences into quantifiable data.

For example, with 5G, traffic management systems could become much smarter, with traffic signals changing based on real-time traffic patterns monitored by a variety of cameras and sensors.

Virtual and augmented reality, technologies long talked about for their potential but which have been held back by the capacity and latency [the delay before a transfer of data begins following an instruction] of existing wireless networks, may finally have a shot at going mainstream under 5G.

It some ways, 5G can be likened to how the advent of electricity enabled industrial productivity on scales never before seen. Except that in the coming revolution, the power behind production will be data, not watts.