A data-driven “fourth industrial revolution” has long been predicted. Now,the support for that platform is finally becoming a reality. Thelong-promised benefits of cyber-physical industrial systems are withinsight.

The year 2019 will be remembered as the year that true cellularconnectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT) finally got going.

Nowadays not a week goes by without a new announcement of a new 4G NB-IoT /LTE-M network rollout. Yet the future for industry is already racingtowards the fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication technology.

5G has potentials of lightning-fast speed, barely noticeable latency (orcommunication response time) and vastly increased capacity.

All four major U.S. carriers have green-lighted test networks and partialimplementations in some cities.

The benefits of marrying the physical world with digital technologies havebeen discussed for what seems like a generation.

Many industries could use the intelligence collected from connected systemsto gain critical insights about their operations and how to makeimprovements that will make a genuine difference to their bottom line.While 4G is already creating dramatic improvements for industries aroundthe world, it’s 5G that’s creating the greater improvements.