Do you remember the leap from 3G to 4G? It was kinda like jumping out of first gear and rocketing straight into fourth. Speeds were 500 times faster and allowed for HDTV streaming and high-quality video calls.

But going from 4g to 5g will make that seem like a stroll in the park. And when the time comes (it’s already here in some places) you’d better be ready to leap on the User-Generated Content opportunities that will come your way. Because if you don’t, your competitors certainly will.

First... what's the scoop on 5G?

In a nutshell, it’s a massive speed and security upgrade on the current 4g network. Data speeds will far outstrip the ones you’re currently used to, promising download speeds of 100 gigabits per second. When you consider that 4g currently tops out around 150Mbps (and that’s with everything running smoothly) you can see what kind of difference that’s going to make.

This isn’t fast... it’s warp speed.

So what will be the 5G effect?

Aside from streaming massive amounts of data (enough for a driverless car network and 8k definition on 80” screens), it’s going to have a huge impact on how anyone with a smartphone captures and shares high-quality video footage.

Right now, 4g is good but it’s limiting (a 60-minute, 4K video with a frame rate of 30 fps can take up to 4 hours to finish high resolution processing). You’ll know this yourself if you’ve ever been to a major event or trade show and tried to upload or download content. The network is throttled and it can take way too long to stay on top of your most current content.

But 5g removes that limitation. In automotive terms, it’s like driving on a 1000 lane Autobahn. And that means…

· Incredibly fast upload times of high-quality video footage from anywhere in the world.

· Even faster download times of the same HD or 8K content.

· The ability to download multiple files at once that are many gigs in size.

This is it. User-generated content will dominate.

There are now over 2.71 billion smartphones out there in the world (around 900 million are iPhones) and all of them have the ability to capture high-quality video footage.

That gives you the power to grab the footage you need from anywhere in the world, at any time. And with an app like Cinebody, it’s easy to curate it, direct it in real-time, and edit it.

“We quickly realized that in theory we could connect all 900 million iPhones with no hard drives, no memory cards, and no logging footage,” said Scott McDonald, CEO of Cinebody. “We could create projects with any number of people, from any place on earth, and all the footage would sync to the cloud within seconds.”

Just think of it. All the video content you could ever need, filmed by fans, for fans, and able to be downloaded and used almost instantly.

5g is the future of content creation and smartphone videography. The question is, are you ready to take advantage of it?