The cities of Stockholm, Sweden and Tallinn, Estonia will become among the first two cities in the world to receive blazing fast 5G mobile networks provided by a partnership between Swedish-Finnish telecom operator TeliaSonera AB and Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson). According to The Local SE, the partners intend to deliver the network by 2018, which will make the cities two of the most connected urban areas in the world, paving the way for innovations in Internet of Things applications, self-driving cars and smart homes.

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Ericsson bragged that, together with TeliaSonera, the company brought the first 4G commercial network online in 2009 and now intends to be the first to market with 5G.

As an innovation over 4G, 5G claims an amazing speed boost that would change downloads of movies from minutes to seconds–in early tests, Verizon Communications Inc. was able to achieve speeds 40 to 50 times faster than 4G.

While TeliaSonera and Ericsson hope to be the first to market with a 5G solution, the companies will be facing some hot competition from Verizon who announced last year the upcoming launch of a 5G network in the U.S. by 2017. Early estimates for the first 5G network started at one appearing as early as 2020, but in 2015 Verizon announced that successful field tests would lead to the earlier launch date cited above.

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, announced during his keynote speech at the CeBIT technology expo, that the city would be getting a 5G network by 2020. This might be behind cities being used as pioneers of the technology, but two years isn’t a long time when it comes to building onto a dense urban infrastructure. Technologies such as 4G (and even 3G) still must support phones on the market, and setting up aside those networks will be a challenge.

Smarter cities communicating faster on 5G

A big implication for 5G networks will be the ever growing expansion of Internet of Things applications such as self-driving cars and smart homes. When someone has a washing machine that can order its own detergent and keep up with energy-saving information involving water use, or a fridge that can update a list of groceries to buy or automatically order more Kool-Aid, there’s a lot of data to exchange.

Self-driving cars themselves may have the power under the hood to act and react without needing to communicate wirelessly (especially those housing the Drive PX 2), but ad hoc networks and on demand traffic information would be amazing for reducing congestion on streets. High-speeds is one angle of the 5G network, but high-speeds also means wide and efficient bandwidth, and as more cars get equipped with wireless transmitters that means more bandwidth will be used.

According to the New York State DMV, in 2014 there were 11.6 million drivers licenses currently valid. Not all of those drivers have their own cars and not all of those cars will have wireless radios, but as self-driving cars make a debut it could significantly increase the number of radios in the city. Already 96 percent of New York residents own cellphones (according to research by the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs) that’s already almost eight million wireless transmitters alone.

This doesn’t even account for the number of devices that will be appearing in smart homes in the coming years.

As 2020 approaches, wireless carriers will be looking to court customers and industries seeking to take advantage of the Internet of Things boom, and 5G will provide a huge boon for customers of those companies. Verizon, TeliaSonera and Ericsson have a strong stake in providing the infrastructure to support that.

Featured image credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc