Mobile 5G presents diverse new business opportunities- Ajay Sood

It has been widely reported that digital transformation is accelerating and enabling new business opportunities, specifically for telecom operators and enterprises from other industries. However, the main drivers for this growth are the need for increased efficiency, flexibility and new business models enabled by the introduction of significantly more robust communication technologies such as 5G.

More specifically, 5G networks create opportunities for new user services and industry applications. Telecom networks are more important than ever for people, businesses and society, while presenting new opportunities that place unique demands on network services and applications. Over time, these will change as innovation in business models, applications, services and technology continues.

As we move deeper into the networked society, with billions of connected devices, new application scenarios and many more services, the business potential for telco service providers continues to expand. 5G technologies will provide the key to tap into this potential, ensuring that customised communication can be delivered to any industry.

In the networked society, we believe that everything that can be connected will be connected. The Ericsson Mobility Report is a good reflection to outline our progress against this vision. Looking forward to 2022, we foresee mobile subscriptions exceeding one billion, smartphone traffic growing 14-fold (compared to today), and 75 million cellular IoT devices being connected.

Between 2016 and 2022, mobile subscriptions in the sub-Saharan Africa region will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of six percent to over one billion subscriptions – leading to a penetration rate of 105 percent in 2021.

Foundation for the networked society

5G will enable organisations to move into new markets and build new revenue streams with radically new business models and use cases, including Internet of Things (IoT) applications poised to provide the next major digital communications-driven opportunity.

World Economic Forum (WEF) analysis estimates $350 billion of value is at stake for the industry over the next decade, driven primarily by consumer and enterprise applications and services, and increasing bandwidth and data usage.

In Africa, the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts significant potential for Machine-2-Machine (M2M) growth, particularly in the energy, utilities and security sectors. The wider societal implications of IoT will also be significant, with potential to directly enable the achievement of at least 12 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. 5G will enable more secure transactions and expand the battery life of IoT devices ten-fold. All this will create opportunities for new use cases that we haven’t yet dreamed of.

Although global businesses see mobile and wireless as critical to the way they do business, business leaders worry that their needs are outpacing existing access networks. To evolve and succeed in the future, business executives say their companies will require revolutionary increases in speed, capacity and connectivity of mobile devices – and they’re looking to 5G networks to provide it.

New services can be expected to be deployed at an unprecedented pace. Service providers target speed in development and deployment of new services. It should be possible to brainstorm one day about a service and test it the next day with customers in a live environment. If the service is well received, it can be scaled up quickly to meet the market demand. Similarly, if the service fails, it may be closed at minimal cost.

Diverse network requirements

There is a wide range of new services enabled by 5G, from support of massive media distribution to remote operation of machines and smart metering. This will result in very diverse requirements on the network. Lifecycles of services will vary greatly. Some will live for a few hours and be used by a limited number of people, while others will exist for years and be used by millions.

The telco environment puts high demands on service availability and predictability. Application software must be robust and handle multiple failures in surrounding infrastructure without compromising the user service. A high degree of automation is introduced to manage and hide the complexity of a large number of inter-operating network applications.

The true benefits of 5G technologies are that it will have positive effects on multiple areas of business, including customer experience, service and product quality, and employee productivity.

JUMOKE AKIYODE