So many 5G use cases at MWC but...

...what is the role of the telco?

100,000 telco execs descended on Barcelona last week for the annual tech fest that is Mobile World Congress. As my colleague, Andrew Collinson, pointed out in a cheeky article last week, the event was dominated by the opportunities that abound as a result of 5G.

There were loads of cars, drones, robots, factories, cities etc. all being enabled by low-latency and high-bandwidth. It was great. Very little exciting on devices (apart from the odd foldable screen) and much more on the opportunities to help enterprises deliver better solutions - more efficiently and more effectively.

It really was great. Except I was struggling to see what telcos do to deliver more value. This is my bugbear with each 'G' - telcos spend vast quantities of capex to speed up their networks but invest nothing in exploiting them. Sure, telcos talk of delivering 'network slices' - network solutions that better 'fit' the needs of their enterprise customers. But I believe this is zero-sum - if all operators do this then there is little incremental value in it.

I saw a couple of things that might generate additional benefit to consumers or enterprises and from which telcos might be able to generate additional value (at least for a while):

1. Fixed Wireless Access. Makes sense if you can use 5G to compete against a fixed operator where you don't have a fixed network. I can see how Verizon would use this in the US.
2. Tiered pricing based on speeds. Forget charging on different data volumes and, like the fixed operators, charge different amounts based on different speeds. Elisa is doing this in Finland and the company believes that they will be able to charge some of their customers more for 1Gb/s speeds. Might work for them as only three operators in the market and would make sense in places like UAE where only two operators compete. In many markets, I am not wholly convinced but, hey, it's a short-term idea I suppose like the network slicing play.

The rest of the 5G hype from the telco industry currently seems like, well, hype.

So, here's a question for LinkedIn readers - can you identify use cases that are materially better with 5G than 4G AND where the operator generates additional sustainable value from the new network?

My belief is that the operator needs to do something different and beyond network investment - e.g. develop a vertical industry solution with a platform upon which they and third-parties (including their competitors) generate solutions which exploit the 5G network to generate additional value. This requires new skills and partnerships and assets - built as a result of a new investment model.

But I hope someone can prove me wrong.