More than half of the companies surveyed in a new report from Keysight Technologies are either already deploying or plan to deploy 5G technologies in the next 12 months.
“The 5G market is well underway,” Keysight concluded, and added that its research “[underscores] the pent-up consumer demand for 5G: the technology is here, it is real, and customers want it.”
Keysight commissioned Dimensional Research to conduct the survey on which its State of 5G report is based, which included responses from more than 350 senior technology leaders and strategists from service providers and technology companies.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said that they had already begun their 5G development, and 16% said they already had 5G partially deployed. Thirty-one percent of respondents said that they planned to deploy 5G within the next 12 months, with an additional 13% saying that deployment would come within the next 12-24 months.
Other findings included:
-63% of respondents anticipate that higher reliability and lower latency will be the biggest impacts of 5G.
-46% of those surveyed cited early 5G market leadership as the primary driver for their investments.
-78% of respondents said that the driving force behind their early investment in 5G was “faster networks.”
In terms of the top industries driving early interest and investment in 5G, telecommunications was (unsurprisingly) #1 — followed closely by the tech industry and then financial services, services and transportation.
Roger Nichols, 5G program manager at Keysight, said that 5G is getting attention from a number of verticals, in particular the financial services industry, which the report cited as an example of how “true business needs” are driving the 5G market.
“The financial services folks have a lot of territory to gain in terms of taking full advantage of the next generation of mobile technology,” Nichols said.
“When you think about what the new business opportunities are that are driven by 5G, based on the very original vision that was set up for 5G several years ago, the flexibility and the scalability of the network is kind of a big deal to enable new business-to-business opportunities,” Nichols went on. “If the latency and the reliability of the network can be made dramatically different from today’s technology, then that would open up business-to-business opportunities that some of us probably can’t even conceive right now.”
Nichols pointed out that the first implementable version of 5G has been complete for almost a year, and that previous generations of technology made it into the real world within 12 to 18 months after an implementable standard was available. Given the large supply chain involved in launching new mobile networks and devices, Nichols said, “it’s not surprising to me that there is a pretty large piece of the industry that has invested in this and is developing technology.”
“The 5G market landgrab has begun. First movers offering quality products will have significant advantages, because customers are waiting,” Keysight said in its report.
The full report is available here.
