As the 5G Standalone transition stalls, “Carriers, because of lack of foresight, may cause themselves to miss badly”
5G Standalone is the “real” 5G, and the “real” 5G is coming. That was a refrain at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where, for the first time since COVID-19 de-railed the conference business among other things, the halls were full, the off-site parties were swinging, and the theme of “Velocity-unleashing tomorrow’s technology-today” was plastered on the walls.
But to that idea of velocity: the February update to the Ericsson Mobility Report tallied 235 communications service providers (CSPs) with commercial 5G services. “About” 35 have launched 5G Standalone, meaning “about” 15%. This shift from the 5G Non-Standalone architecture, predicated on an updated radio access network (RAN) combined with a cloud-native core, has been billed as key to moving 5G beyond enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) to additionally include ultra reliable low latency communications (URLLC) and massive machine-type communications (mMTC).
Anecdotal, but this publication observed less focus at the show on URLLC and mMTC—two of the three vertices on the classic 5G use case triange—than on 5G-Advanced, the name for 3GPP Release 18 which hasn’t been finalized, but is being billed as when 5G lives up to the hype around scaled “digital transformation” of enterprises and industries, etc…It would appear the hype cycle has reset, and the goal posts have been pushed back (again).
In a chat with Oracle’s SVP of Software Development for the global communications business unit Matt Beal, he observed that “carriers are largely abandoning IoT,” and are facing “a business model issue first and foremost. And, more importantly, it’s a supply chain issue to industries. Fundamentally telcos could go play, but they’re interfacing with the wrong people and they’re asking the wrong questions.”
So what are the right questions? From Beal’s perspective, they don’t have to do with 5G, with IoT, or with technology in general. They have to do with applications that solve the tactical problems businesses are trying to work through to gain efficiency, deliver new revenue streams and otherwise improve operational processes.
“We’re in a really interesting conundrum on SA where you have people fundamentally asking the question of, ‘I don’t see an application, so why should I build SA?’ It’s kind of like Alexander Graham Bell saying, ‘I don’t see anyone from one city trying to talk to someone in another city, so why do we need a telephone?’ People are not wanting to spend the money. [But] failing to build SA completely crushes the investment of your NR build.”
“Carriers, because of lack of foresight, may cause themselves to miss badly,” he said. Then Beal recalled a quote from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
Beal said it’s important carriers and their partners don’t “get discouraged and walkaway.” He gave the example of IoT, which was largely not present at the show, as something “the carriers are largely abandoning…We’re about to walk away just at the moment people start relying on those capabilities.” He cautioned against the idea of building a platform thinking people will buy it without focusing on making sure the platform is easy to consume.
To that end, Beal showed off the work Oracle is doing in the food and beverage and public safety spaces. Think easy to use hardware/software packages that can, for instance, help an aspiring restauranteur deploy and manage a point of sale system, or assist a law enforcement entity in ingesting a variety of camera feeds in a way that prioritizes what’s important.
The main thrust of these products is around ease of use and proof of value, not that they are 5G-enabled applications that depend on IoT devices. “I can make a tremendous and disruptive change in our industries just with communications, connectivity and devices,” he said. “If carriers dither, the opportunity will disappear and the world will go over the top. Industries need these capabilities and they won’t wait for carriers to figure that out.”
This theme around the why and how (and if) of operators’ efforts to become more than just connectivity providers will be front and center at RCR Live: Telco Reinvention, April 25 at the Barbican Centre in London–register to attend here.
