Why invest in 5G? This question was considered by our panellists at yesterday\u2019s industry seminar \u2013 \u20185G – Beyond Technology into Business Impact\u2019 \u2013 where attendees discussed the business challenges involved in rolling out 5G technology at scale.<\/p>\n
As Adam Koeppe, Vice-President (Access Technology Planning) at Verizon, pointed out during the session: \u201cthe LTE roadmap is healthy, robust and has a long way to go.\u201d There remains significant value in 4G, even ten years into its lifetime; that being the case, what incentive is there for operators to prioritise resources for 5G? Why spend billions of dollars on new cells with a viable technology already in place?<\/p>\n
Chair of Network 2020 at Deutsche Telekom, Bruno Jacobfeuerborn, was clear on the scale of the challenge, citing recent research from Barclays, which concluded that only the strongest of the fully-integrated operators will be able to afford to deliver the full spectrum of 5G capabilities. \u201cGigabit customers are going to need terabit networks,\u201d he said, and the level of investment needed in new base stations will be significant. So how can this make business sense?<\/p>\n
The answer, in short, is \u2018demand\u2019. Consumers are now increasingly aware that 5G can enable services which are not currently widely available, but in which interest is growing all the time. Take, for instance, ongoing innovations in the auto industry. Demand for connected vehicles has increased by over 400% since 2015, with exponential growth projected between now and 2020. Awareness of what smart vehicles have to offer is rapidly on the rise by businesses and individual consumers alike, and they have demonstrated their willingness to pay for it. Peter Virk, Director of Connected Technologies & Apps at Jaguar Land Rover gave the seminar an overview of the new capabilities which have fuelled this demand, and how those of the near future will continue to do so, and a reminder of what they will all need a great deal more of: bandwidth. The advent of autonomous vehicles cannot happen on the basis of today\u2019s infrastructure alone: it requires 5G capability, which means consumers demand it.<\/p>\n
Adam Koeppe reminded the session that \u201cas an operator, our challenge is to grow the business: period.\u201d Few businesses with an eye to the future will content themselves with the status quo, even where that is feasibly an option. As new use cases arise, operators find even now they must revise their business models for existing LTE technologies, in a constant process of making them economical \u2013 the foundations of which were laid ten years earlier. It is therefore simply imperative to meeting the demands of consumers, and maintaining relevance to their lives, to begin that process in earnest for 5G. \u201cWe need\u201d, Bruno Jacobfeuerborn urged attendees, \u201cto do something to get the terabit society up and running.\u201d<\/p>\n