FEATURE: 5G
REPLACING HOME BROADBAND WITH
5G COULD THRIVE AS A RESULT OF THE
LOCKDOWN. PEOPLE WILL REVIEW
THEIR EXPENDITURE AND WHAT
MAKES THEM HAPPY.
happy. We’ve already seen the uptake of
more subscription models for entertainment,
so it follows that consumers will also invest in
the technology to make it a slick anywhere
experience, untethered to wires.
With business models shifting as a result of
lockdown, this could lead to 5G supporting a
company’s plans for growth and innovation
in a way not conceived before, or certainly
not at the scale envisaged.
bedfellows – the likes of Amazon and Azure
partnering with the operators.
Most recently, Google has partnered
with Telefonica in Spain to support
digitalization strategies. It all makes
perfect sense, given the complementary
expertise and partnerships, to sell more 5G
applications in a mobile edge cloud very
close to the customer.
Yet, at a higher level there are still some
pivotal questions to address. Most
importantly, will this be a repeat of the
2000s, where service providers performed
all the heavy lifting in LTE, but ceded all the
application value, thus all the financial value,
to monoliths like Apple and Google?
Retailers could play to this new appetite
for experience with the launch of AR/VR
services, enabling consumers to see what
the piece of furniture they want to buy
looks like in their home or how that new
shirt or dress virtually fits before they part
with their money.
Strange bedfellows
Delivering ultra-high bandwidth quickly
and reliably, with an ability to scale
applications is the challenge with 5G
promises. However, the situation has
created what some might see as strange
There could be some tricky conversations to
come, about exclusivity and who owns the
customer and how the revenue is divided.
Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud
can all provide expertise in selling and
scaling applications in the cloud. However,
the service providers will bring their own
54 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com