Verizon Media CEO explains how 5G is about more than super-fast downloads

The advent of 5G technology has consumers excited. Among other things, it promises super-fast media downloads. But 5G is about more than that.

More broadly speaking, 5G reduces latency, explained Verizon Media Group CEO Guru Gowrappan.

“Think about driverless cars,” Gowrappan said. “What 5G does is it literally takes latency away.”

Driverless cars involve a lot of applications that need to react within the “blink of an eye,” he explained.

“Health care is going to be a big one,” he said. “We’re seeing that in terms of... making health care accessible to more people because now you’re not going to have latency in terms of bandwidth. [You] think about people who don’t have access to medicine or health care today.”

Gowrappan explained how 5G will also revolutionize advertising experiences. Static display ads will soon be enhanced with augmented reality (AR) and extended reality (XR). He used the example of a chair: Instead of just seeing an image of a chair, you will be able to see it in your room, you’ll be able to change the color, and you’ll be able to “play” with it before you make the purchase.

Essentially, any business that requires wiring and data processing is likely to be impacted by 5G technology.

“Every industry is going to get disrupted,” Gowrappan said. “5G just accelerates that.”

Verizon Media Group is a subsidiary of Verizon (VZ) and the parent company of Yahoo Finance.

5G comes with the promise of dramatically reducing latency.

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