One of the biggest challenges faced by those looking to change to the digital nomad lifestyle with location-independent remote working is within internet access and ensuring that they’re able to reliably do the work that pays for the travelling lifestyle – whilst there are many resources online to help those in certain locations identify the best places to work from as some are available at Digital Nomads World, there’s no guarantee that these options will always be available, particularly now as the pandemic may have led to many big changes. The widespread introduction of 5G could certainly help here, however, and change the way remote workers function forever – along with other options on internet that are growing through things like StarLink, the barriers that may have previously prevented remote working on a wider scale particularly for digital nomads are slowly being lifted, and further opportunities are continuing to present themselves to those who need them most.
The most impactful change that this brings more than anything is the ability to work remotely without any required to be at a physical location – most digital nomads will take advantage of publicly accessible connection through cafes and restaurants or even city funded connections wherever possible, but there’s never a guarantee that this connection will be the most reliable or even provide the speeds that are necessary to get the work done, but with 5G coming at a steady baseline when rolled out it will provide many with the consistency whilst on the go that’s needed to make digital nomad work much easier.
There are of course drawbacks to this waiting period – the rollout of 5G has been somewhat slowed down because of the pandemic period and it could still take quite some time until it’s available everywhere, whilst big cities are primed to receive it first and be a higher priority which is good for many, but those who have already received access will be all too aware that it isn’t operating at full capacity from the beginning which means you’ll still be looking for alternatives for quite a while and may initially at least cause more disruption to your usual working habits than not having it at all.
Either way, the introduction will certainly provide many more opportunities for those looking to explore opportunities in the digital nomad lifestyle or even remote working as a whole as it looks as if many will be seeing the permanent change throughout this year, and with faster speeds and greater capacity available for the connection it does lift strain off of the public wifi availability and may provide opportunities for individual locations to even improve what they’re able to offer too, so in the rare times that the remote worker isn’t able to rely on 5G, they will have a better connection than before to fall back on to.
