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2019 was a pivotal year for 5G, as operators and enterprises began to stake their claim in the technology and consumers started to realise the benefits of the latest mobile generation:• Operators: Operators are increasingly seeking ways to grow revenue and cut costs in a low-growth environment, which is made more complicated by the demanding requirements of 5G services (i.e. high speed, low latency and ultrareliability).
Operators therefore need to evolve their networks (using innovations such as virtual RAN, edge networking and network automation) to meet the demands of the 5G era. They will also need to diversify their revenue streams (into areas such as pay TV, media/entertainment, advertising and IoT) to seek growth beyond core telecoms services.
• Enterprises: While speed gains are a well-recognised benefit of 5G, other improvements (e.g. network slicing, edge computing and low-latency services) are not widely appreciated, with many companies believing that 4G remains ‘good enough’. Most of the key benefits for enterprises won’t come until standalone 5G is deployed. The challenge, therefore, is to lay the foundations now and start the conversations about what problems 5G can solve in the future. As this is a highly competitive area given the presence of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other cloud companies, speed to market is an important factor.
• Consumers: Awareness and knowledge of 5G are both rising as hype makes way for reality. However, there is wide variation across the globe in terms of intentions to upgrade to 5G and the willingness to pay more for it. In general, consumers in South Korea, China and the Middle East tend to be the most willing to upgrade to 5G, while those in the US, Europe and Japan seem satisfied using 4G for the time being. 5G is still in its infancy though; as more tangible use cases are deployed, more consum
