Is your business anxiously anticipating 5G? The answer is probably “no”.
I’m genuinely open to being proven wrong. In fact, I hope I’m wrong. The alternative is…disappointing.
You might never have put much thought into it — it’s not exactly something to dwell on. But if you give it some attention, you might come to realize there’s been a lot of chatter about 5G in the background noise of our semi-digital world.
At least, that is my experience.
The cost of your familiarity: billions.
Maybe you’re like me and realized that it wasn’t just “a lot of chatter”. You might have (correctly) registered that the push for 5G has been immense.
Carriers and phone makers are marketing the need for speed. But convincing consumers to upgrade will cost, and could be a hard sell. This is not egregious underlining. It’s the title of an article by George Slefo over on AdAge.
Collectively, the four [major wireless providers] spent nearly $5 billion on measured media last year in the U.S., according to Ad Age Datacenter. [1]
And that’s for 2018! George would tell you that this number certainly increased through the end of 2019.
The question: does the subject of all this marketing justify the billions of dollars being spent by these wireless providers. If the answer isn’t an obvious yes: what’s going on?
I’m genuinely open to being proven wrong. In fact, I hope I’m wrong. The alternative is…disappointing.
So what if a industry is wasting its money?
Besides just the general desire that things be less bad, I think the case of 5G marketing is worth focusing on because of the discussion points — the promises of enabling exciting new innovations — at the center of the message.
It would be a meaningful disappointment to many individual consumers and business customers.
It’s not just marketing dollars on the line. The competitive drive to bring 5G to market is a central justification for the largest merger of two wireless provides in recent industry history. Or at the very least, that is the justification of the two companies involved — T-Mobile and Sprint.
Helpfully, you can go read (“redacted for public inspection”) the document they submitted to the FCC back in 2018 arguing just this point. In a little over 600 pages, T-Mobile and/or Sprint attorneys argue that the merger will better position “New T-Mobile” to compete with Verizon and AT&T, and that consumers will ultimately benefit from this new marketplace despite the loss of potential competition between T-Mobile and Sprint.
For our purposes, this document provides a concise argument from a major corporate entity as to the importance of 5G and its wide-scale implementation in the present and immediate future
How? Let’s consult the Table of Contents for this document:
It’s not just the average consumer that will benefit from the rollout of 5G. According to T-Mobile and Sprint, 5G and its associated innovations will enable American businesses to build and leverage a vast new array of enterprise Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions.
In addition, with its world-class 5G network, New T-Mobile will be able to support and spur the broad spectrum of commercial IoT applications of the future.
One moment for a note on buzzwords…
Buzzword alert: Internet of Things!
Tech buzzwords are interesting. Machine learning, data-driven, artificial intelligence…
They are interesting because the reason the buzzword is a buzzword and reason they are poked fun of for being buzzword are simultaneously both true and completely contradictory.
What do I mean by that? Consider Artificial Intelligence. It is simultaneously true that:
- AI has the potential to change entire industries — its extremely disruptive.
- AI is often over-hyped and misunderstood. It is often (mis)applied to problems it is not suited to solve. AI is not nearly as mature or robust as most consumers believe it to be.
I would make the argument that this dichotomy applies just as well to the Internet-of-Things. It might also apply to 5G.
Screw the negativity, what’s the cool stuff?
Again, I’m especially interested in the impact of 5G on enterprise and innovation.
If 5G has the potential to be disruptive, then where are the seeds of this disruption?
Let’s pull in a bit more from that FCC document. This first quotation comes from a section by the name of Larger Product Portfolio:
Put differently, large enterprise clients will likely be first in adopting IoT solutions designed for businesses, and the service providers supporting them will enjoy early entry into the nascent IoT market that will provide broad economic benefits for the entire U.S. economy well into the future. New T-Mobile’s network will be able to support these new IoT and enterprise services — and thereby enhance competition in the enterprise market segment — in the near term.
And from the next section, Enhanced Commercial IoT:
New T-Mobile’s broad and deep 5G network will create opportunities for better products and services across a range of commercial IoT applications. Some applications, such as connectivity for autonomous vehicles, are possible only with a network that provides reliability, speed, and low latency. Other applications, such as smart city lighting, sensors, or meter reading, are not latency-sensitive and do not require much speed, but do need a network that can handle a very large number of devices over a wide area
This is all well and good. Who doesn’t want “smart cities,” “smart communities,” or autonomous vehicles?
At this point, it might seem like I’m about to drop a massively-negative “hot-take” about how 5G is completely propped up by marketing hype, and that it will never live up to its hype.
This is not the case. (Let’s assume) I believe that 5G is the technical potential to be as disruptive as New T-Mobile says it will be. I’m not as much interested in the medium-long term forecast. Instead, I have a question with a much smaller time-horizon.
My question: Right now, how are American businesses and innovators preparing to leverage a scaled-out 5G network?
If 5G is the buzzword is has positioned itself to be, then I would expect for their to be legions of charismatic tech leaders ready and waiting to pounce on the competitive opportunity.
That said, where are they? If 5G has the potential to be disruptive, then where are the seeds of this disruption? New T-Mobile said that enterprise clients will be quick to shop for “nascent IoT solutions”. Where are the innovations jumping aboard this deep-pocketed hype train?
Sure, 5G will improve mobile coverage for consumers; you'll probably get better service on a skyscraper-lined Manhattan avenue. But where are the technologies that will change the way we do business? What does a 5G “Smart Factory” look like?
I’m not saying we’ll never realize the loftier promises of 5G, but I find it curious that, at least in my sphere of existence, the true anticipation of the technology doesn’t match the hype.
I’m not alone, I suspect.
I’ll leave you with a much more fiery take than I expected (from a response a similar question I asked over on Hacker News).
The only idea more preposterous than “5G causes Coronavirus” is that “5G will have benefits for consumers.”
Spicy.
