Infrastructure saves time … and time is money. That’s why infrastructure advancements always produce wealth-creating opportunities.

Decade after decade, generation after generation, humans have strived to develop more effective means of long-distance communication. From smoke signals to homing pigeons to messages-in-a-bottle, we’ve tried just about everything to send communications from point A to point B as quickly and effectively as possible.

Transportation has progressed through a similarly varied and fascinating evolution.

As these two processes have developed over time, they have combined with one another, either directly or indirectly, to create the basis of what we now call “critical infrastructure.”

Throughout the last 160 years, communication and transportation networks have fanned out across the United States in tandem with one another. As they did so, enterprising individuals — railroad magnates and steel tycoons — used these advancements to create fortunes.

Today, at this very moment, a similar opportunity is presenting itself: the 5G (fifth generation) technology standard for cellular networks.

5G is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in the beneficiaries of a brand-new “information highway.”

It isn’t just the “phone technology” that follows 4G — like how the iPhone 12 will soon follow the iPhone 9.

It’s a quantum leap in communications technology. It replaces 4G like an automobile replaces a horse-drawn buggy, or like a personal computer replaces a slide rule.

5G is an information highway that is 100 times faster than and accommodates a 10X jump in the number of connections than the 4G networks we use today.

So today let’s take a closer look at 5G — and at a top profit opportunity there.

But first, to place this opportunity in context, let’s take a brief look back …

How the Nation Became Great

Our nation’s first major communications project kicked into high gear midway through the 19th century with the Pacific Telegraph Act of 1860. This groundbreaking legislation sought to “facilitate communication between the Atlantic and Pacific states by electric telegraph.”

The act subsidized construction of the transcontinental telegraph line by granting $40,000 per year to the winning bidder, along with a free quarter-section of land every 15 miles along the entire 2,000-mile route from Omaha, Nebraska, to the West Coast.

The two winning bidders completed the transcontinental line in little more than a year. When that first telegraph message crossed the United States in October 1861, it brought an abrupt end to the short-lived Pony Express and signaled a new era of high-speed electronic communication.

Just two years later came the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, which authorized construction of a rail line westward from Omaha to the Pacific Coast.

Unlike the Telegraph Act, this law lavished bountiful subsidies on the winning bidders. It granted one square mile of public domain land on alternating sides of the railway along the entire route … and provided tens of millions of dollars of up-front financing, repayable over 30 years.

Two years later, the winning bidders returned to Congress to secure a second Pacific Railway Act, which doubled the size of the land grants and allowed the railroads to sell their own bonds.

Because laying 2,000 miles of railroad track was more challenging than stringing telegraph wires, the construction took nearly seven years. But once complete in 1869, the new railroad reduced transcontinental travel time from several months to just one week.

Sixteen years later, the American Telegraph and Telephone Co. started building a transcontinental telephone line from New York to the West.

By 1892, the line reached Chicago. By 1911, it spanned to Denver. And by 1914, it crossed the continent. In July 1914, AT&T President Theodore Vail conducted the first successful cross-country phone call.

The Panama Canal Purchase Act in 1902 set that massive project into motion, and it also opened for business in 1914.

The canal slashed shipping times between the East and West Coasts by more than four months. Prior to the canal, the voyage from New York to San Francisco would cover 8,000 miles and require five months.

But with the canal, the New York-to-San Francisco passage took just 16 days. That boosted shipping efficiency by a factor of 10, which produced a commensurate jump in economic opportunity.

The nation reaped a similar economic boost from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which allocated $25 billion to establish the 40,000-mile Interstate Highway System.

It was the largest public-works project in U.S. history at the time and has become a key part of America’s economic “circulatory system.”

Following closely on the heels of this massive undertaking came the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970, which expanded and beefed up the nation’s airport and airway system.

These ambitious transcontinental infrastructure achievements did not simply enable us to conduct the same tasks more quickly. They enabled us to devise entirely new businesses and ways of life.

With the railroad, for example, California growers shipped the first boxcar full of avocados to New York in 1927… and this quintessential California fruit has been crisscrossing the country ever since.

The railroads also enabled businesses like the Campbell Soup Co. to establish nationwide franchises. The soup company was able to transport produce by rail from the Midwest to canning facilities in New Jersey. From there, the company rolled out boxcars full of tomato and cream of celery soup across the country.

The transcontinental railroad also moved “communication” by taking newspapers and the mail from boat and horse-drawn carriage to the rails.

Each of these infrastructure enhancements transformed commerce as well as the American lifestyle. They opened the door to completely new modes of commerce and enabled completely new ventures.

At every step of the way, forward-looking entrepreneurs and investors made millions … or at least a lot of money.

Information Superhighway 5.0

The nation’s up-and-coming 5G communications network is the latest variation of America’s constant infrastructure advancement.

This new technology is the next generation of mobile broadband that will replace or augment existing 4G LTE connections.

5G technology drastically improves upload and download speeds, while also improving latency, the time it takes devices to communicate with wireless networks.

The current 4G network delivers around 100 megabits per second. But once 5G rolls out, that number jumps to 10,000 megabits per second — or 100 times faster than the current speed.

That “100 times faster” means that a new generation of technologies will become feasible and flourish.

Whereas 4G provided the network speeds necessary to run online apps and mobile streaming, 5G represents a monumental leap forward. It provides the foundation for “gee-whiz” technologies like:

• Autonomous vehicles
• Telemedicine and remote robotic surgeries.
• “Smart factories” that integrate machine-learning processes with human oversight.
• Internet of Things (IoT), a vibrant, high-speed network of physical things that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of exchanging data and communicating with other devices, systems, and/or people.

It’s estimated that 5G networks will generate a whopping $13.2 trillion in global sales activity by 2035. The table below shows the five industries that stand to benefit the most.

Clearly, we’re on the cusp of a 5G revolution … and this revolution will create enormous opportunities for select companies and their shareholders.

Obviously, it is impossible to predict with certainty which companies will benefit the most. But this opportunity is still in its infancy, which means it will produce a growing list of winners over time.

At this early stage of the game, I’ve identified one company as one of the best bets.

This company is approaching a very long runway of rising revenue and earnings growth from the global 5G deployment … and it possesses the potential to outperform the overall market by a large margin over the next few years.

Monday, in the brand-new September issue of Fry’s Investment Report, I recommended this company to my members.

At the end of the second quarter, this company revealed it had already obtained 86 commercial contracts and had constructed 31 live 5G networks. And last month, it proudly announced its landmark 100th 5G contract, while also updating the “live network” tally from 31 to 56.

You can learn how to get my complete analysis and my “Buy” instructions — along with the rest of this month’s new issue — by going here.

On the date of publication, Eric Fry did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Eric Fry is an award-winning stock picker with numerous “10-bagger” calls — in good markets AND bad. How? By finding potent global megatrends … before they take off. And when it comes to bear markets, you’ll want to have his “blueprint” in hand before stocks go south.