Customers in both the public and private sectors, as well as the telecom sector, are increasingly confident in 5G as a technology, according to a new survey commissioned by Boldyn Networks of users in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland. But many of them also anticipate that their 5G spending will end up being more expensive than planned.
5G was, “first and foremost, intended as a technology to serve businesses. A technology
that would deliver an interconnected society, bring huge financial and operational benefits,
influence future business models and create enormous value,” Boldyn points out in the report. The company goes on to say that “While the roll out of 5G has been met with mixed feelings, confidence in the future of the technology appears to be rising significantly. In fact, expectations of the future performance of 5G have positively shifted as
roll out has progressed.”
The report is based on a survey of 600 telecom, enterprise and public sector IT decision makers in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland.
Among the report’s findings:
-88% of U.S.-based public and private companies said that 5G has a “direct impact on the performance of their organizations”; that figure was at 64% in the U.K. and Ireland.
-Half of respondents from the public and private sector anticipate that 5G will be the “biggest digital disruptor” over the next five years.
-Almost two-thirds of public and private sector organizations in the U.S. indicated that they think 5G will be able to deliver “optimal performance in relevant urban areas” in the next 6 months; 85% thought that would happen within the next 12 months. Confidence was slightly lower in the U.K.
-Most respondents—96%—reported difficulty in deploying 5G infrastructure and achieving the right cost and ubiquity. Telecom respondents in particular cited the need to lay additional fiber, and justifying the expenses of deployment when use cases (and therefore ROI) were still unclear.
-There are cost considerations as well: “Full full 5G rollout is expensive and 8 in 10 organisations think they’ll exceed their planned spend,” the report said.
That last point is going to drive work for neutral-host infrastructure providers as the 5G deployment focuses shifts from roll-out to densification, Boldyn says in its report. The company’s survey found that 47% of organizations said that increasing deployment of macro cells or small cells was a priority across the board, both geographically and across respondent groups. Fully 60% of respondents overall had a network densification strategy already, with 73% of U.S. telcos saying that they had a “clear” 5G densification strategies, and nearly that many U.K. and Ireland operators (65%) saying the same. (The percentages were lower among private enterprise and public sectors organizations.) It’s probably not surprising, then, that 88% of public sector companies in the U.S. said that they were likely to pursue deployments through a neutral-host provider who would do the work of densification for them. This was followed by U.K. and Ireland telcos (80% said that they planned to work with a neutral-host provider), 79% of U.S. telcos, 74% of U.S. enterprise respondents and65% of U.K. and Ireland enterprises.
The report is based on a survey of 600 telecom, enterprise and public sector IT decision makers in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland. Boldyn commissioned Sapio Research to conduct the survey, which took place in August of this year online and via telephone.
More details from Boldyn Networks here.
