Apple's Vision Pro might be the first to fully use 5G tech — or not

Articles / Analysis

Apple this week unveiled its highly anticipated Vision Pro "spatial computer" that is viewed by many as an inflection point in the virtual, augmented and extended reality (VR/AR/XR) space, but could it also be the first device to take full advantage of 5G cellular technology?

To get the punchline out of the way first, Apple has so far released very little on the connectivity aspects of the device, with most assuming Wi-Fi will be the connection medium to internet-based content. This could place a big emphasis on the ability for Wi-Fi to provide a stable connection method for applications that will likely require very high speeds and extremely low latency.

Apple does have optional embedded 5G support in its iPad tablets and of course in all of its iPhone smartphones, but does not currently include cellular as an option in its traditional laptop computers. The Vision Pro device runs on a specific operating system, visionOS, that Apple said is "built on the foundation" of its other operating systems, but "was designed from the ground up to support the low-latency requirements of spatial computing."

David Callisch, marketing director at enterprise private wireless platform provider Celona, also pointed to Apple highlighting private network support tied to its latest iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 operating system iterations. This will allow devices running those operating systems to connect to private networks running 4G LTE, 5G standalone (SA) and 5G non-standalone (NSA) implementations.

Commercial 5G NSA networks rely on an operator's legacy 4G LTE core for base processing and routing. A 5G SA core, which consists of the user plane, control plane, and shared data layer network functions, allows operators to deliver a more resilient core network and support highly-touted 5G services like network slicing, automation, orchestration and mobile edge computing (MEC).

Analysts are currently mixed on this connectivity challenge, a feeling enhanced by the lack of clear information from Apple.

"At its core, a Vision Pro could be used without internet connectivity for on-device games, content and experiences, but its primary use case is for connected applications," Martin Scott, research director at Analysys Mason, noted in a report. "XR devices heavily rely on high-speed, low-latency, reliable connectivity, especially for real-time interactions in XR and, in [the] future for metaverse applications. Connectivity to the device (which includes both the on-premises connectivity and the broadband access connection) becomes crucial when graphics rendering moves to the cloud. This is not so much of a concern for the first-generation Vision Pro but will be important in future. However, good Wi-Fi connectivity is still a potential point of failure for the first-generation Vision Pro."

Despite this potential opportunity, some are not quite yet ready to state an immediate need for a VR headset to include an embedded mobile 5G connection.

"There's little real use case for a VR or XR device to be connected via 5G, despite the best hopes and dreams of the carriers, at least until the headset is reduced to the size and weight of a pair of glasses and becomes part of our everyday fashion as an AR device," Eddie Hold, president for Connected Intelligence at consumer research firm Circana, wrote in an email to SDxCentral. "Any product that seems to be designed for in-home use is better off with a Wi-Fi connection that uses less battery power and costs less to implement than a 5G modem."

Apple's initial positioning for the Vision Pro device would appear to limit connectivity concerns. The tech giant went out of its way to highlight the spatial computing aspects of the headset, with usage demonstrations not appearing to be significantly stressful toward connectivity.

However, it's not a big leap to see how the device could spike interest in revenue-generating business applications and environments that could prove a challenge for Wi-Fi. This is a big problem for enterprises that have services heavily reliant on extremely low-latency connections and that would seem to be ideal for the Vision Pro device.

Jake Schwartz, senior executive director for innovation and technology at Quality Executive Partners, explained that his company has so far tried to steer clear of connection issues for the VR training tool it provides to the pharmaceutical vertical. This includes a focus on caching as much information and data as possible onto a local machine or resource with a direct connection to the HTC Hive VR headsets it's currently using to support the training platform.

That decision is important for performance and comfort reasons.

"Aside from just the normal logistical challenges that come with using Wi-Fi is that your fidelity and your performance are not simply a measure of quality, they’re also a benchmark of comfort," Schwartz said.

He noted that "trying to stream 4K HDR video over poor Wi-Fi, maybe it takes a long time to prebuffer, maybe it stutters, maybe it downgrades resolution and then comes back up to full res and does that whole thing that we’ve all seen happen with streaming video on bad Wi-Fi. The difference is: with VR you cannot do that because when you dip in quality — if you drop frames, if you drop frame rate — then you’ll cause nausea, you’ll cause visual fatigue; it will make it completely unusable. It's a very big problem that every media distribution, content distribution system faces, but it's uniquely critical for anything that's going to be strapped to your face."

Wi-Fi has traditionally been challenged by the unlicensed nature of its spectrum. This model limits the power and amount of spectrum that Wi-Fi access points can use to beam out signals so as not to infringe on other users.

But, 5G technology being beamed over licensed or even quasi-licensed signals could bridge that challenge and the mobile telecommunications space is taking notice.

T.J. Vitolo, director of product engineering at Verizon, told SDxCentral this week in an interview that some Verizon customers are coming to the carrier because their Wi-Fi deployments are not able to handle their high-bandwidth and low-latency requirements.

"Our customers are coming to us because their existing Wi-Fi networks aren't able to support the use cases that they’re building out, so their IT teams are essentially struggling with trying to manage the bandwidth and latency requirements across their companies for these types of devices and experiences," Vitolo said.

"When we come in, we have a laundry list of challenges that are faced across their networks, especially as we look to our private networks to support those demands," he continued. "We are getting very specific asks from customers, challenges, issues from customers to solve those problems. And we have very recently [made] one deal with a major government contractor that we are solving that exact problem. There's a lack of support from Wi-Fi and the ability for Wi-Fi to support those networks. And we’re looking at both the combination of our public network and our private network to solve for their use cases that they just cannot execute on."

Vitolo said the Vision Pro launch "takes a bit of the enigma out of AR and VR for both enterprise and consumers." For Verizon, the launch falls into work it has been doing in terms of how it looks to manage the potential network impact of new use cases.

"We’ve been looking at devices — AR, mixed reality, VR devices — for quite some time and looking at the use cases that those things will support, but we’ve looked at, more importantly, the scale and impact these devices will have on our network," Vitolo said.

"I think the difference now, from their announcement to the years of planning, has been how much more quickly is this going to advance a scale that we’ve assumed and that's the next big thing for us to tackle is that we know what we need in terms of delivering the content types and support for the latency and the bandwidth The question is how broad and scaled are these changes going to be, based on this announcement?"

Vitolo added that the Vision Pro device will increase attention from a consumer standpoint on three enterprise XR use cases the carrier is currently focused on: remote expertise, training and engineering-based solutions.

"Obviously, from a consumer standpoint the Vision Pro really starts to add to that equation," Vitolo said. "Breaking this down, when you look at the primary use cases for what XR is utilized for, what specifically is the type of content, the demand that's going to be put on our network, both our mobile network and more broadly speaking our mobile network which supports our fixed-wireless access networks at home."

Even if the Vision Pro device launches without embedded 5G connectivity, the technology could still serve a role.

Jason Leigh, research manager for mobility and 5G research at IDC, stated that the initial absence of any 5G support could be tied to the still-expanding nature of 5G coverage and, more specifically, the higher-performing 5G SA iteration.

"Outside of T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T are still deploying their 5G standalone version of the network," Leigh said. "And 5G SA is really going to be where you start to do some very neat things."

Leigh noted that the initial 5G NSA deployments were "all about putting the pedal-to-the-metal from a speed perspective. But latency, the ability to do network slicing so then you can set all of that AR traffic in its own slice so it's less likely to impact overall mobility traffic, those kinds of features, as well as development of the edge connectivity, that's the piece of the puzzle that I think it all plays into. They’re not independent technologies, they all rely on each other."

That reliance could be the perfect recipe for driving 5G adoption and monetization.

"I’ve often likened 5G as the secret sauce to an advanced use case like AR," Leigh said. "If you’re going to have a mobile version, get it away from a data center in a non-fixed application, you need that robust connectivity."

Leigh did note that Apple could use an embedded Wi-Fi connection in the Vision Pro device to tether to a user's 5G-enabled smartphone to enable greater mobility.

"I’ve seen some commentary that the headset is still a little on the heavy side, you don't want to wear it for more than an hour or two," Leigh said. "But, if you can offload that compute, the 5G connection to the mobile edge, you suddenly lighten the load.

"Offloading that compute," he added, "you improve battery life and eventually all of that creates an opportunity to do some interesting things on the hardware design piece of the puzzle. But I think we’re just not there yet."

Vitolo said Verizon is focused on making sure it can be that robust connection. He noted that Verizon's 5G-based FWA service will likely be the backhaul connection for many of the Wi-Fi connections the device may instead use. The carrier recently reported it was serving 1.9 million FWA customers, with plans to grow that base to 5 million customers by 2025.

"I think you’ll start to see the use cases migrate from in-home to out-of-home. And I think when that starts to become the case, the conversation around mobility will start to grow," Vitolo said. "I think there's a wealth of things that can be accomplished in a home today with that device and that we will need to make sure that our fixed-wireless access networks are well prepared to support. And the out-of-home mobility piece, I think, will come over time. And we plan on having those conversations and seeing where that goes."