28 percent of the telecom operators expect to deploy 5G next year, according to Ericsson’s 5G Readiness Survey 2017.
The 5G research report from Ericsson said 78 percent of the operators accelerated preparations for the new technology and trials of 5G network.
Highlights
# 78% say they are in 5G trials this year vs. 32% in 2016
# 36% say they have a clear strategy in place for addressing industry segments with 5G, doubled since last year
# 36% have a clear strategy in place for 5G business models, up from 21% in 2016
The Ericsson survey also shows that operators have further developed their business strategies for 5G services. They are now looking beyond the consumer segment and foresee opportunities in the enterprise and industrial segments as well.
In the 2016 survey, 90 percent of the respondents pointed to consumers as the main segment in their 5G business planning.
“This year, operators have identified business opportunities in both the consumer segment and enterprise users and specialized industries,” Thomas Noren, head of 5G Commercialization, Ericsson.
Mobile operators are seeing that the consumer market is becoming saturated. As a result, 5G planning this year is more evenly distributed across specialized industry segments (58 percent), business users (56 percent), and consumers (52 percent).
Media and entertainment, automotive and public transport, healthcare, energy and utilities are the most attractive sectors for 5G applications.
A clear majority of the respondents believe that Internet of Things will play an important role and that third-party collaboration will be essential in this context.
Additional revenue will be generated from increased market share, migration of 4G subscribers, higher prices for new services, and by expansion into new enterprise and industry segments.
Ericsson earlier said that telecom operators can address a $582 billion global market opportunity leveraging 5G technology for industry digitalization.
Ericsson interviewed 50 executives in business and technical areas from 37 operators globally that have announced publicly they are working on 5G.
34 percent respondents admitted to cautiously waiting to see how implementation plays out for other operators.
82 percent of technical respondents chose multi-user massive MIMO as essential component for 5G. massive MIMO dynamically transmits data as highly-focused beams to simultaneously send and receive multiple data signals over the same radio channel, enabling multiple users to utilize the same time and frequency resources.
Mobile operators also believe that device-to-device connection (71 percent), network security (68 percent), virtualized network functions (68 percent) and network slicing (68 percent) are essential to 5G.
In saturated telecom markets, such as North America, mobile operators envisage monetizing 5G connectivity by taking market share from competitors with new features and performance (23 percent) or better pricing (18 percent); by migrating current 4G subscribers to 5G and charging more for 5G features (23 percent); and by expanding to new enterprise/industry markets (18 percent)
