Is 5G a failure?

With the delicate situation of the telco world, I thought I would throw my two cents into the conversation on whether 5G has been successful or not. This piece is divided in 3 parts: A New Hope, Cross Road Blues, Utopia – ofc these are a few thoughts not meant to be exhaustive but let me know what you think below

A New Hope

No, 5G is not a failure. The root of the problem is somewhere else. If you build a house with crooked foundations the house won’t be straight. Similarly, the ecosystem started with crooked assumptions, namely the need for 5G, the demand for use cases that can be supported by other technologies or use cases that are simply not needed, and wildly inflated expectations. I also think that the never-ending comparison between telcos, OTTs and hyperscalers’ growth hindered 5G, just because it happened to others it does mean it will happen to you so you can’t use that as a leading model.

Cross Road Blues

The consumer market failed – yes we can say that, comment below if you disagree on a global scale – so enterprise emerged as the holy grail of 5G revenues. Yet, the idea that 5G will provide the gift of fast and bounty revenues as in a devil’s pact is once again erroneous. 5G does not move the needle in the enterprise market, whether it is private network, FWA or network slicing. Assuming that 5G in any form equals demand and revenue is the same mistake done in the consumer market. Even more as enterprise is dominated by the need for solutions. There is also the elephant in the room that none wants to talk about. When you are a company whose consumer market generates 90% of your revenues (it is a very conservative number) your attention, bets and investments in enterprise will be micro-steps. You should take a leap of faith if you think that enterprise in the long turn can really change that % to 70-30 or 60-40. Easier said than done when you have investors’ pressure on your shoulder (way easy from where I stand).

Utopia (enterprise focus)

The game is not over, but first a couple of doubts in my mind. If you are a telco with an enterprise division and the growing areas are integration, consulting, cloud, cyber and similar while the decreasing areas all around connectivity, it is difficult to sustain the message that having telco expertise will be a long-term advantage. Seems to me the other way around, granted this is not black and white so there are exceptions. But this brings me to another doubt I have: most current and future tech bets and markets are outside of the telco comfort zone and expertise. Take AI as an example. I see the AI trend happening relatively untouched by the telco world – yes there is AI for network automation and such but that is a vendor’s game; and if you are a telco with AI playing a key part in your enterprise play, DM and let’s chat about it. But to end on a positive note, there are still cards to play. Cybersecurity for instance is an area where a few telcos have started to expand, sometimes on the back of acquisitions. This is an area where I think telcos can play a solid role, particularly with the rise of protectionism and isolationism and the issue of trust becoming more and more relevant. You can match this with 5G, private networks and other bits and pieces, creating a trusted solution that may be appealing for the enterprise market.