Charting a Course to 5G

Sacramento (CA) expects to soon be the first city in the nation with commercially available 5G telecommunications networking. City officials see big promise in the emerging technology. “Smart city stuff, IoT, autonomous vehicles: We will use it for all of those things,” said CIO and IT Director Maria MacGunigal.  Yet MacGunigal isn’t primarily focused on the whiz-bang municipal impact of 5G. “The use cases will change 100 times,” she predicted. “What we do know is that we will need the infrastructure, so we want to build it and build it well. The infrastructure is what needs to be strong.” 

Nationwide, IT leaders in state and local government are following a similar trajectory. They’re stoking enthusiasm for the promise of 5G: a bigger, faster, more reliable network built to empower a coming wave of connected-everything. At the same time, they’re taking a sober look at infrastructure requirements, seeking a path forward that is financially viable and technically feasible.