Almost every time I see an article or advertisement on 5G, a reference is made to remote surgery. The point that is being made is that 5G has lower latency and remote surgery would be more practical because of it (for example, mainstream media, ad publications, and research papers).
Question: Is this just a marketing angle, or is there a real latency benefit of 5G over an optical fibre (only) infrastructure in the context of remote surgery?
My expectation is that during a remote surgery separated by thousands of miles, the last mile(s) network would be 5G but in between it would still be fibre optic cables. So why not just use optic cables between the surgeon and the robot? And even if it was 5G all the way between these two devices, I understand radio waves and light travel at the same speed. So I imagine whatever low latency tech used for 5G infrastructure could also be implemented on a fibre optic infrastructure to achieve the same benefits on fibre optic.
