infrastructure that doesn’t necessarily support 5G speeds. The rearrangement of spectral frequencies supporting 5G is gradually happening – most major towns and cities will soon have some form of 5G available. Yet, it may be some time before networks are upgraded so that 5G-enabled cities will be able to take full advantage of 5G’s low-latency, high- throughput potential, paving the way for complex applications like autonomous vehicles. Beaumont thinks the UK is still a year or two away from that. 5G FOR ALL? Will 5G connectivity help democratise production, granting new power to local creators and niche interests? Not immediately, Beaumont cautions. “It’s nearly here, but the main barrier is the relatively high cost of 5G chipsets. While 5G might start to achieve ubiquity on the network side, there is still the issue of cost with 5G specialist filming kit and modems – typically ten times the expense of equivalent 4G gear. It needs to become more commodified before there is huge uptake.” As Doherty launches into the trials this year, she is anticipating invaluable feedback that is relevant industry-wide. “We want it to work, because it could really be put to good use. We would like to be able to integrate it into what we’re doing at Candour. We’re already being approached by people looking for live content for various projects. From a storytelling point of view, It has new possibilities. While 5G may not be the answer to all of our prayers, we hope it will answer quite a lot of them.”
GOING UNDERGROUND One of Live & Wild’s filming projects is a caving system in North Yorkshire
BUILDING THE FUTURE Doherty sees the collaboration with aql as laying a groundwork for future filmmakers. “We are potential end users of the workflow that we’re testing. I’m constantly thinking how ideas on our slate could incorporate 5G in the future.” How quickly it can be adopted is dependent on the state of technology infrastructure. Beaumont notes networks have already come very far, very fast. “It’s only been the past ten years that the supporting networks for mobile operators have moved from old-style telecoms bearers to data bearers. The latter allows more granular routing and local offloading of traffic. Previously, if we were both in Leeds and I called you, the call might go down to London and get switched there, before coming all the way back up to Leeds. The less traffic we haul up and down the country, the less stress on the major bearers and the more efficient we are.” Presently, explains Beaumont, 5G foundations are being built out on an underlying data THERE IS STILL THE ISSUE OF COST WITH 5G SPECIALIST FILMING KIT ANDMODEMS
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