I hear over-and-over again from industry experts that 5G doesn’t matter for consumers. Yet every time I turn on the TV, I see Communications Service Providers (CSPs) advertising consumer 5G devices and phone plans. It’s easy to see that it matters.
The focus on the enterprise
Right now, the industry focus is on the enterprise use cases that 5G will build and rightfully so. With 5G being the first generation built in the cloud, it opens a world of monetization opportunities for CSPs to sell directly into the enterprise which is not something that happened with previous generations.
Leading 5G and Telecom thought leadership, most of what I do every day involves looking at network solutions through the core, RAN and edge and imagining what they could create. I build out use cases for a variety of enterprise verticals including healthcare, retail, manufacturing, AV and more.
This sort of forward thinking is where the industry is going, it’s the next trend. But so much of this monetization in the enterprise is new for the industry and it’s not something that is going to happen overnight.
Let’s remember that 5G is a completely new architecture — many of the industry connections into the enterprise have not been made yet. This B2B space is a whole new frontier.
If you build it, they will come
Recently, I participated as a panelist on a 5G Monetization Forum. Moderated by Eugina Jordan, the VP of marketing at Parallel Wireless, the discussion included Renuka Bhalerao, connectivity programs at META, Diane Rinaldo, executive director at Open RAN Policy Coalition, Beth Cohen, SDN networking product strategist at Verizon and myself. It was a great conversation about all the amazing industry advancements in RAN, MEC and beyond. When we were chatting about the panel beforehand, I shared my frustration when I hear people say 5G for the consumer as “over-hyped.” Diane immediately chimed in, stating: “If you build it, they will come.” She is right.
When 4G first launched for consumers, it was the same story we hear with 5G today — a faster and more reliable network. But there were no apps that required 4G to run. Those came after deployments were abundant and service was widely adopted. Apps like Uber and Instagram Stories (my personal favorite) simply could not run on sluggish 3G speeds, but how quickly we forget these came *after* 4G was deployed.
Currently, there are no apps that require 5G speed to run, but if we build it, there will be. Once 5G hardware and plans are widely adopted, it will spark the next generation of creators to create even more amazing, immersive applications like we’ve never seen before! Apps that require massive amounts of data to be processed with no latency. We have to build the network to ignite this innovation.
I see the first 5G apps being built in the retail space. They would give consumers a fully immersive experience from online-to-store-to-mobile. Consumers are demanding more connected experiences for the ways they shop no matter where they are.
The journey to 5G
We should continue to have conversations surrounding what 5G will build in the enterprise because that’s the future. Today, there are 5G phones and 5G data plans provided by the biggest CSPs in the world. Consumer 5G opens up a world of (yet to be discovered) apps and the sooner they enable 5G, the sooner the network will be expanded and 5G apps will come to market. These apps will open exciting experiences for consumers which, in turn, will enable enterprise use cases.
5G for the consumer is not over-hyped; it’s here and the possibilities are endless.
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