What benefits will 5G be for small and mid-sized companies?

The fifth generation of mobile communication (5G) is the latest generation of wireless technology and it is expected to have an immense opportunity for great different number of industries. This technology is going to meet current wireless technologies limitations and enable fully smart factories. Some large companies intend to developing their communication technologies to 5G, however, there are some surveys showing that small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) have paid less attentions to this technology and also they adopt the mindset of wait-and-see which increase the possibility of failing their business. The reason can be that SMEs mostly do not have IT specialists or researchers and due to the lack of financial resources for research in communication information technology (CIT) and automation. Consequently, enhancing their automation systems is going to be very costly and perhaps risky. The risk of this is that, many times due to using old technologies, their competitors will overcome them in the business. This research aims to study the benefit of the 5G for small and middle size manufacturing and to explore if 5G is an optimal solution for SMEs network communication. To provide that, five companies are selected and investigated in Gävleborg and Dalarna counties in Sweden. Then each company is interviewed individually and the evaluations are done by an observing survey and review of the literature. The investigation shows that wired systems are still providing the main communication network technologies in SMEs. Besides, current communication issues that SMEs are dealing with are usually due to using insufficient technologies. In other hands, current radio access is still based on the advanced LTE, whereas the 5G, which is promised to meet all a fully smart industrial requirements is known as 5G New radio (NR), is still on the progress and predicted to have expensive implementation. On the other hand, in future when 5G NR system will be widespread accessible everywhere, and also when we will have optimal and straightforward factory ecosystem transformation, broad 5G applications and simple IT-support the business, a fundamental change is going happen on the way of business scenery for all size of enterprises. As a consequence, if SMEs do not adapt themselves to the new technology and new business model, they will go out of the business