How will technology shape post-pandemic life?

The Covid-19 crisis has drastically altered how we go about our daily lives, creating what we’re collectively calling the “new normal.” As these changes are unfolding, there’s never been a greater need for a robust telecommunications plan for the US: one that prioritizes security, strength, and prosperity. Nokia has played — and will continue to play — a major role in shaping the high-performance digital anatomy of our world, where 5G serves as a central nervous system for a society that’s rapidly virtualizing. In this world, Nokia says that the concept of “Remote X” will rule — where “X” refers to control, interaction, treatment, assembly, manipulation, and diagnosis. In other words: remote everything, and a whole new way of connecting.

It might seem that Covid-19 abruptly disrupted work and leisure, but in many ways, the pandemic simply has led to quicker adoption of technology that was already making inroads in both the business and consumer worlds.

Video communication and collaboration services have become vital to work as office buildings have emptied out. The cancelation of classes at schools and universities has led to huge surges in e-learning, fundamentally altering how teachers do their jobs teaching, and how a generation of students will learn. Virtualization trends in health care are rapidly accelerating, too, as maintaining social distance between the sick and healthy becomes imperative.

The pandemic has had a similar impact on industries. Specific sectors, including mining and manufacturing, that already were adopting automation and remote-operations technologies for safety and efficiency are having a comparatively easier time weathering the Covid-19 storm. Some of the pandemic’s biggest business impacts have been in supply chain management and asset tracking, given the allocation and delivery of goods has shifted dramatically. The geography of distribution has been redrawn: Goods and services that once flowed to office parks, financial centers, and restaurant districts are now flowing to local stores, supermarkets, and, increasingly, directly to people’s homes.

That’s not the end of it. Entertainment and leisure have witnessed radical transformation in their own ways. Streaming platforms’ fast growth has only accelerated, even leading Hollywood to rethink how it releases films to the public. With traffic being down for bars, restaurants, and concerts, people have turned to video communication services for human interaction; the digital happy hour has replaced the in-person happy hour.

Whether for work or for leisure, networks are the beating heart of our new reality. And as businesses and enterprises increasingly lean on digital connections, the demand for network capacity is skyrocketing. In just a few days in early April, Nokia registered a whopping 30 to 50 percent increase in peak traffic over router infrastructure; by comparison, these increases are usually spread out over an entire year. We’re only seeing the beginning of this shift to a Remote X world.

The new reality of Remote X is built on three pillars: access to critical network infrastructure, the industrial internet of things (IIoT), and security for all. Nokia lays the groundwork for all three, and in doing so, is accelerating the adoption of 5G while looking ahead to 6G.

For Remote X to be viable, networks and infrastructure need to be accessible to those working and playing remotely. Everyone must have access to low-latency, high-capacity, and highly reliable network connections, via both wires and airwaves. Remote X also places heavy emphasis on the cloud. As the workforce and leisure activities become highly decentralized, so must the applications we use and the content we consume.

Although cloud services are already well established in the US, Remote X will require the adoption of edge cloud services. Rather than placing everything in a centralized data center, Remote X services — along with the computing power and data necessary to run them — must move far closer to workers and consumers, allowing them to take full advantage of the highly responsive and extremely fast network connections at their disposal. Home networks can’t just match the capabilities of enterprise networks: They’ll have to exceed them. We’ll need to perform tasks remotely and interact with customers, coworkers, and friends virtually — all in ways we never imagined in our pre-pandemic world.

IIoT also will play a critical role in a Remote X reality. New technologies are emerging that sense, monitor, understand, and interact with the physical world. For instance, IIoT could help make the workplace safer again, even as the pandemic persists. Cameras, motion detectors, and even the mobile network itself could help monitor the corridors and public places of an office building to ensure people maintain safe social distance, for example. Assisted by AI, this kind of intelligent office could restrict access to a room when it’s already reached maximum safe capacity, or warn employees and visitors when they’re standing too close to one another. It could even detect if someone isn’t wearing a mask, gently reminding them to don one.

Finally, security will take central importance in a Remote X world. Companies that once relied on walled-off enterprise networks to keep their secrets safe are finding themselves in a world without walls. Employees won’t just be interacting with one another from any and every conceivable location, they’ll be controlling every aspect of the business remotely. The foreperson of a factory, for instance, will need to orchestrate armies of robots on the factory floor from their living room. Rental car agents will have to hand over virtual car keys with a few touches to a smartphone. As digital interaction replaces physical interaction, the threat of cybercrime could have far more disastrous consequences, too. Robust end-to-end security isn’t just necessary to protect people and companies — it’s critical to creating trust. If people don’t trust Remote X interactions, then they won’t use the very tools designed to keep them physically safer and healthier.

Innovation always has been the cornerstone of American ingenuity, and it’s what fuels Nokia, especially through the iconic Nokia Bell Labs. Its 90-year history has delivered groundbreaking inventions such as the transistor, the quantum cascade laser, and the solar cell, among others.

Through all its challenges, the pandemic has forced everyone to think in fresh ways. Although increased connectivity is of vital importance (Nokia Bell Labs recently demonstrated a new world-record data speed of more than 1.5 terabits per second over fiber), the country needs to figure out ways to build a platform for human connections. Our post-pandemic world will require new types of technology that can facilitate creativity and augment human intelligence.

The future could include smart factories, run by both collaborative robots (cobots) and humans. Cobots would attend to repetitive, boring tasks, freeing up humans for more challenging work. Through 5G networks, machines will be constantly connected and aware of their environments. They’ll be able to self-correct when they encounter something unpredicted and act largely autonomously — with only a very gentle human touch to guide them.

More urgently, innovation will find new ways of managing the pandemic. Nokia Bell Labs has been experimenting with novel AI and machine learning methods for tracking the overall movements of the population, correlating that data with Covid-19 public health records. Using that approach, authorities can arm themselves with the information they need to implement health policies that maintain the right balance between public interaction and social distancing. Looking further into the future, Nokia Bell Labs also is working on optical sensors, finely tuned to the body’s physiology, that just might be able to proactively predict the next pandemic.

The Remote X world demands faster, better connectivity all around. Notably in May, Nokia set the world record for 5G speed (4.7 gigabits per second in its over-the-air, or OTA, network in Dallas). And yet to prepare for the new Remote X reality, that type of innovation will need to stretch even further. Nokia is laying the groundwork for 6G, which will expand our fundamental notion of communication and pave the way for a multitude of new human augmentation technologies. Already, 5G is delivering the internet of things. The capabilities of 6G take that many steps further, looping humans into that hyper-connectivity equation. It might sound like science fiction, but 6G will be able to sense people in addition to physical objects, and allow people to interact with each other and objects virtually. Imagine technology that could detect changes in cell structures that might be the beginnings of cancer: That’s one of the hopes of 6G. Nokia expects that this next iteration of networks will launch commercially around 2030.

The accelerated, post-Covid reality holds true promise for new technological frontiers related to cloud architecture, 5G, and private networks for people across the US. Expect jobs to evolve, new careers to emerge, and productivity to increase. To prosper in this new reality, the country needs trusted networks, innovations, and a commitment to accessibility.

Covid-19 is a reminder that necessity is the mother of invention. As we’ve learned, a global pandemic can change life in a matter of days. Although many of those changes are hardly welcome, the pandemic has paved the way for a Remote X future. One where, with the help of technology, we’ll be able to work, take care of each other, and entertain ourselves in whole new ways.