Nearly halfway through the 5G cycle (assuming a 10-year generational change cycle), there seems to be growing criticism that 5G is not living up to its promises. that This has mainly to do with operators incurring huge capital expenditures to acquire new spectrum and launch services, but 5G has come without any major new services-based revenue streams. Done deliver.
But the reality is that 5G is a technology that lacks the mandate to do or not do something. At a technology level, the current generation of mobile phones offers significant improvements in system-level performance and efficiency, and offers new network-enabled features and other enhancements. The problem is that carrier business models have not evolved in tandem with the technology. Carriers are still selling connectivity as a commodity, instead of selling industry-specific business outcomes that leverage 5G capabilities.
“People make mistakes”
In conversation with RCR Wireless News“I don’t think 5G did anything wrong; people make mistakes. I don’t like to criticize technology, but technology often becomes an unfortunate victim,” says Lee, founder and executive analyst at neXt Curve. Rather, Lee says it was the marketing hype cycle that saw 5G come into the world in a pre-standard form that got it wrong. “It’s a set of promises that were laid out ahead of the technology at the time, and it’s definitely way ahead of the roadmap,” Lee says.
“5G has been a success in many ways, but to understand its success you need to look at the end user: Do ordinary consumers and businesses consider it a success? 5G promised a lot, but not all of it has been delivered,” said Jaydee Griffiths, managing director of the Next G Alliance. Griffiths said the 5G standards process was “incredibly robust,” but there may have been some gaps in the standardization of features that aren’t necessarily solutions to real-world problems.
From standardized features to viable commercial products
“Once a feature becomes standard, many in the industry say, ‘Mission successful! Yay!’ But then [they] “We forgot the step of, ‘Oh, we have to actually build a product that supports this functionality.’ And we need an ecosystem around user equipment, specifically customized for verticals,” he said. “Not every industry needs a standard smartphone or tablet. They need purpose-built devices.”
Sameh Yamany, CTO of VIAVI Solutions, put it succinctly: “A lot of money was spent buying spectrum, but there was little pressure on how to deliver ROI. Expectations were high for 5G.” But 5G delivered. He said 5G brought improvements to the foundational technology, from the radio access network (RAN) to the core to the transport network, as well as in timing and synchronization. “We are seeing that. A lot of good things have happened.”
One school of thought focuses not on whether 5G has delivered on its promises, but on how 5G came about. “What did 5G promise?” Jonathan Borrill, CTO at Anritsu, ponders the question. “What did 5G promise? It promised flexibility. [and] This flexibility allows for a variety of use cases, verticals, everything… Did we make the right choice or the wrong choice?”
“RAN flexibility has been very well realized.”
He continued: “On the RAN side, yes, we got RAN flexibility. We got it very well. We got RAN flexibility really well.” And what about the core and the move to a service-based architecture (SBA)? “Did we get it right? Probably we did. But it required a lot of complexity in the 5G core to get it. I don’t know if it was the wrong choice, but it brought a lot of complexity to the 5G core. So the big challenge now is, ‘How do we get flexibility without adding complexity?’ That’s what we missed a little bit with 5G and that’s the challenge with 6G.”
For a deeper discussion on the path to 5G and 6G, check out this on-demand webinar.
