5G is the here and now

5G is not the future. It is the here and now.

Before too long you will be able to experience concerts or sporting events from the comfort of your couch. Businesses will automate more and more of their processes, with human staff promoted to creative and managerial roles. City planning, health care and logistics will all be transformed. And 5G’s speed, capacity and latency will underpin all these advances.

This was the theme of my keynote speech at Mobile World Congress Americas. And the message was echoed by many others at the same event.

Clearly, the first service providers to bring this game-changing technology to market will establish themselves as product and thought leaders.

But the race is being run on an international scale too.

Every country in the world is desperate to unlock 5G’s new forms of value as soon as possible. And the nation that gets there first will become the de facto center of the new 5G ecosystem, with all its jobs, innovation and intellectual property.

The U.S. achieved this with 4G, and look what happened: life-changing innovation and huge wealth creation.

Naturally, the U.S. wants to repeat that victory with 5G, beating the other front-runners – such as China, South Korea and Japan – to the punch. In which case, there is no room for complacency. Governments, regulators and businesses must act now, and they must act together.

Of course, with new opportunities come new questions. With 5G comes increased automation and artificial intelligence. And we need these technologies to work for society.

How can we be sure that future working patterns will decrease inequality rather than increase it? What are we doing to ensure that the people creating the technology reflect the diversity of society itself? And of course, how can we be sure that automation will create jobs rather than destroy them?

These are complex questions with real implications for how society fits together. They all have their own answers. But the starting point is surely education – changing our current learning structures in order to provide children, and indeed older people, with the skills they need to thrive in a digital world.

One thing is certain: sticking our heads in the sand is no solution at all. We need to be open. To be clear about the good that the telecommunications industry brings to the world. The work we do makes people more connected, businesses more efficient and nations more cooperative. And 5G will only enhance those benefits.

But this left me with a couple of thoughts.

First, if a company builds a road, or a bridge, or an airport, it will likely receive tax breaks and other incentives. But telcos are not only expected to foot the bill for communications infrastructure, they are taxed hugely for the privilege. And all this in an industry that works on low profit margins in the first place.

Do we really value our communications infrastructure so much less than any other type? And is this the best way to arrive at a high-quality 5G network as soon as possible?

Governments that are serious about 5G could start by cutting telcos some slack, seeing them as partners, not cash cows.

But also, given that we will soon embark on a massive international project to build that 5G infrastructure, this is the time to make sure that we are building it safely and securely.

In a few years 5G will underpin every business, every school, every public service. Why would we risk the security of something so important? We know only too well that the old methods of patch-on security have failed. Instead, we need 5G networks that have inherent security, built and operated by trustworthy partners. Partners like Nokia. 

This would be a positive step towards a hugely positive technology. And it would do a huge amount to unlock the better, faster, more flexible future of 5G – in plenty of time for the next Mobile World Congress Americas.