MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS FEATURE
“There is definitely a divide between
those who are generating this
technology and those who are
commercialising and monetising it.”
JAMES MANNING SMITH, FUTURE SOURCE
“Last year and the year before we
had these big, shouting stands about
5G but now that has toned down a
little bit. There is still a lot of 5G around
MWC but it is limited and people are
making their suggestions of what it
can do more sensible.
Part of the issue is that 5G needs a
short and not very strong waves to get
the highest speeds which may work
very well in a city with a grid system
but in a city like London where you
have lots of side streets you are going
to need 10x the infrastructure to place
networks beaming rays at the hotspots.
That learning process is one of the
bottle necks for the consumer roll out
and will therefore apply to B2B which
might also be limited.
There could also be problems with
uptake and being able to provide a
5G service. Investment in one factory
having 5G antennas on all four corners
is going to be costly and may be
difficult. So, there are a lot of things
that will limit 5G in the short term for
the learnings to happen in 5G networks
when they are up and running.”
COST OF PROGRESS
Despite the restricted use cases of 5G
for consumers, operators are pushing
on with the roll out of 5G airwaves
with the first plans in the UK expected
within the next six months.
However, according to Amdocs
marketing director Tzvika Naveh, “It
seems at this point service providers
are spending a lot of money on
acquiring frequencies, but they are
clueless about how to monetise 5G.
The most appealing use case right
now is fixed wireless access (FWA),
such as Verizon, and there is talk about
network slicing but they don’t really
know how to monetise 5G.”
Last year, operators in the UK shelled
out close to £1.15 billion on the first
round of 5G spectrum and are now keen
to roll out the airwaves to the general
public this year but, as Naveh alludes to,
use cases are difficult to come by.
Three recently announced plans to
rebrand FWA provider Relish as Three
Broadband in time for a 5G rollout in the
second half of 2020 however Ruckus
senior vice president of worldwide sales
Bart Giordano warned that 5G is not a
wireless connectivity Nirvana.
“I see a lot of people talk about 5G
replacing Wi-Fi, but I think they miss
a very simple distinction between the
two technologies. Wi-Fi or Wireless
LAN connects devices on a local area
network.
The spectrum for mobile networks,
5G is expensive, and it is limited to
people or organisations who can go to
a spectrum auction and pay billions
of dollars for this licenced spectrum
and pay billions of dollars to build
the infrastructure. It can provide a
really great experience, but Wi-Fi is an
unlicensed spectrum and it is much
more cost efficient to operate and deploy
these networks.
The use cases for the two
technologies are very complimentary
and will continue to co-exist but I don’t
ever see 5G replacing Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi
replacing 5G because the economics are
fundamentally different, the use cases
that are supported are different and the
trend today is that, as mobile data usage
grows, the pace of consumption of Wi-Fi
grows three times faster.”
“There is definitely a divide
between those who are generating
this technology and those who are
commercialising and monetising it”
said Manning Smith, “if you look at eSIM
technology some operators have only
just started looking at eSIMs for the
Apple Watch.
But there is that reluctance to invest
in their networks and develop its next
generation of connectivity. There’s an
essential market for industrial uses
of 5G and eSIM will be important for
enterprises to have their own slice
of networks but I don’t know if the
operators do see more potential in the
industrial eSIM applications and I’m
not sure if the consumer will drive the
industrial uses.
It comes down to the issue where
the operators have got to optimise the
April 2019 www.technologybusinesstoday.com 27
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