The biggest story at the Winter Olympics thus far might be a pair of 17-year-old American snowboarders--
I mean, who can resist these two?--but the games in PyeongChang are also serving as a proving ground for new telecom technology.
Both Intel and Korea Telecom (KT) will be testing various 5G technology at the games, providing live virtual reality views of various events via cameras located at the venues. The idea is that the 5G connection will allow data to move quickly enough to create an immersive experience.
Perhaps the best feature available is something called "time-slicing," which uses multiple cameras strategically placed around a venue to provide fans with real-time 360-degree views of an athlete in action.
Fans will also be able to watch live feeds from bobsledders’ helmet-mounted cameras or switch between multiple cameras placed along the cross-country skiing route to follow races using Samsung 5G-equipped tablets.
“In many of these cases, the content that the person would have the ability to view is only achievable through 5G,” Alok Shah, vice president of networks and business development at Samsung Electronics America
told USA Today. “It’s not that they’re going to be getting faster speeds to their phone, it’s that the ability to visualize what’s happening on the skating rink or bobsled track — to capture that data or that video — is just not possible in a pre-5G world.”