What’s wrong with 5G? There’s no question that it’s deploying broadly, after all. There’s no question that operators are committed to it. There’s no question that new smartphone models support it almost universally. There’s also no question that, like most tech these days, it’s been hyped mercilessly, and that (again, like most tech these days) it’s moved from the “it’s-everything-you-ever-wanted” to “it’s-a-total-wreck” phases of coverage in the media. I thought it might be interesting to see what thoughtful telco planners said about the technology and its future, so I culled my contact information to find out.
Back when 5G was first starting to deploy, those “thoughtful telco planners” believed that 5G was an essential evolution of cellular technology, just as 4G/LTE was. They also believed that 5G could support a new set of applications, and that it would also support new telco business models, but even though stories about 5G were already dancing on the edge of realism, planners didn’t see it as a revenue/profit revolution. That changed.
Over the last two years, as promotion of “5G benefits” grew in scope and stridency, the majority of planners got a bit more optimistic about the impact of 5G on revenues. This came about for two reasons. First, there was a growing buzz in the media, and that provided operators with (false) confidence in their supply-side visions. There was a tendency to apply the “Field of Dreams” theory of “build it and they will come” to 5G. In other words, it wasn’t that planners had any specific new plans to realize 5G revenue, as much as that they expected the availability of 5G to result in the almost-immediate realization of that “new set of applications” and “new telco business models”. Today, about two-thirds of thoughtful telco planners believe 5G will drive significant new revenue, and believe that revenue growth will come about because other parties will exploit 5G in various ways and because 6G will resolve all the latent benefit issues.
What about the other third? This group, made up largely of more junior, more technical, people, believes that new applications and business models exist, but have lost faith in the idea that simple 5G availability will drive others to find and exploit them. Some (a bit less than half of our third, or a sixth of planners overall) don’t believe that anything really new and revenue-significant will evolve in the next three years. Those that do believe it will think that operators themselves will have to take steps.
If you dig into the “others will do it or 6G will ensure that” view, you find that those who hold it are solidly entrenched in the supply-side view of the market. This is understandable in a way; data services in general, and consumer data services in particular, exploded once the technology needed was made available. More senior people, particularly the top-level planners, came up through the organization when network delivery alone constrained both worker information empowerment and new forms of consumer entertainment. They’ve not changed their mindset.
The younger planners who grew up after the Internet and information empowerment were in place are starting to wonder just what pent-up stuff could possibly be lukrking in the background awaiting the changes 5G would bring. Broadband has caught up with that early pent-up experience appetite. What replaces it?
Both groups got excited about the metaverse. For the old guard, you could align metaverse requirements with 5G’s differentiating features pretty easily, and the metaverse had the happy property of being the implementation responsibility of others. You want a metaverse? Great, we’ll connect it once you have it ready to connect. To the old guard, all the metaverse hype is proof that “they will come”. Now, they’re depressed because the coverage of the metaverse has already turned a bit negative.
What about the group that thinks that telcos will have to do something proactive, not just launch 5G and wait for people to leap into action to exploit it (and spend on it)? It would be lovely if I could report that this group was growing and evangelizing their position, shifting telco mindset and preparing us for some real change, but I can’t say that. The “do-somethings” are confused and divided. They’re as excited about the metaverse as the old-guard group, and they believe that telcos could help get it going, but just how to do that isn’t clear.
The largest of the divisions are planners who believe that open-source projects, substituting for traditional standards, are the answer. Even the Field of Dreamer two-thirds majority of planners agree that software is the key ingredient in new applications and business models to drive significant 5G revenues, and so there’s growing support for things like the Sylva Project, which I blogged about HERE. However, of the “do-something” group, support for the Sylva concept and similar initiatives is mixed.
5G’s real differentiator is latency. Thus, there really isn’t much debate that whatever will drive real 5G revenue gains will have to be associated with edge computing. The question is whether edge computing is an application, or another layer on the Build-It model, but still a long way from the top. Most of the do-something third of telco planners think that Sylva and other edge-linked initiatives are exercises in bottom-up design, and apart from software architects’ disdain for bottom-up thinking, the problem is that the actual benefits of the technology are still up in the clouds, where nobody can really see them or see who’s responsible for making them happen.
The metaverse is obviously a “top” element, but it’s so high up the food chain that even the young and Internet-savvy planners are having a problem deciding just what would help it to deploy. So, the majority are hoping (and waiting) for some consensus architecture to emerge. If it doesn’t….
But is this just an argument over development strategy, or is there something fundamental at stake? Even those do-something planners who believe that Sylva and similar projects still miss the critical piece—the ultimate demand that the metaverse might epitomize—there’s a lack of a sense of the specific risk involved. “We need top-down” is a conclusion, not a justification. Why do you need it? I don’t get good responses on that question.
Why do we need top-down? Here’s my personal list of reasons.
First, I think that an edge-computing shift only changes what we’re Building and waiting for Them to Come. Edge computing is a hosting strategy not an application. Is dependence on simply hosting an unspecified set of applications any less risky than dependence on connecting them? Don’t you have to contribute something functional?
Second, I think that if you consider the hosting requirements for edge computing without any specific application set to target, you risk dumbing down the feature set. Yes, edge hosting means having the ability to host at the edge, but just saying “container model” or “function/lambda” isn’t enough. Most of today’s applications, in or out of the cloud, utilize some “middleware” tools that facilitate consistency in design and reduce development efforts. What tools will our hypothetical “Theys”, like metaverse applications, need? We don’t know because we don’t know that the applications are.
Third, edge computing is its own hype target, and in fact has likely passed the point of maximum impact. This explains why Sylva got essentially zero publicity in the trade publications. Given that, it’s not likely to be hailed as the savior of 5G’s value proposition, which means that 1) the media may turn totally negative on both edge computing and 5G, and 2) they may start the 6G hype cycle in earnest. We’re already seeing 6G stories, so that wouldn’t be difficult, and a focus on 6G decouples any 5G work from favorable market perceptions.
The final question is what the do-something group thinks is going to happen, and here things are a bit discouraging. Do they think that the number of do-somethings will grow? Yes, but only a little bit, and only because of the retirement of some of the other group and the hiring of new people. Do they think that anything can change the minds of the majority? No. Do they believe that the current practices will lead to significant 5G revenues within the next three years. No. What could solve this 5G revenue problem? Well, let’s see.
The responses here are a mixture. Some say IoT, some say the metaverse, some say “facilitating services”, and in all these responses there’s a risk of my findings being influenced by my own views. I don’t survey all these kinds of people in a statistically defensible way. The great majority are people who know me and most of these read my blogs. Some, in fact, have gotten to know me because they’ve contacted me in response to something I’ve said there. Thus, I can’t present my findings in this critical area as being unbiased. But I think they’re realistic and relevant, and time will tell whether I’m right.