MWC Told 4th Industrial Revolution Underway; Sprint CEO Says Local Rules a Challenge
A theme of the Mobile World Congress Americas Wednesday was that, driven by advancements in wireless, the world is in the middle of a fourth industrial revolution. Verizon Wireless Group President Ronan Dunne said as a newcomer to the U.S., he feels lucky to get here “as the first glimpses of this new world are coming into view.” Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri said some are skeptical about promises of this new digital age. And Sprint's CEO warned that local roadblocks are a hurdle, saying he discussed it with the president.
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In the past year, Verizon “laid the tracks for next-generation connectivity through 5G trials in cities all around the country,” said Dunne, former CEO of Telefónica UK. Verizon hit the 1 Gbps download mark, “crushing every other speed test to date,” he said. Verizon also launched unlimited plans “giving customers the data they desire,” he said. Wireless is now “the largest platform for innovation in the world,” he said. “We’re on the brink of the biggest transformation.”
Dunne sees 5G as having the potential to be one of the few technologies in history that “transform industries across every sector of the economy,” with a huge effect on economic growth. Fifth-generation wireless should be viewed as similar to the advent of the printing press and the internet, he said. There are now 8.4 billion connected things in use as part of the IoT, projected to grow to more than 20 billion in 2020, he said. Dunne also cited destruction from Hurricane Irma: “The real work starts now.”
Launch of 5G will mean having to install hundreds of thousands of small cells, Sprint's chief said. “Every single city in America has a different idea of how much they want to charge, of how long it’s going to take to get your permits approved." Marcelo Claure said he discussed the importance of small cells with Donald Trump in a recent meeting. “I showed him how small a small cell is and I told him ‘it takes us one hour to put in a small cell, but it takes us one year to get an approval to put in a small cell,’” Claure said. “With the federal government, the local government, the county government -- we’ve got to find a solution, a fast one, if the U.S. wants to continue to be the leader.”
Unless the U.S. finds a way to speed approvals, the nation won’t be the first to deploy 5G, Claure said. Equipment makers like Apple and big internet companies like Google and Facebook depend on carriers and the networks they build, he said.
The world had a “golden century” from 1870 to 1970, but U.S. productivity growth since fell off, Suri said. Nokia forecasts that as a result of the new industrial revolution, the U.S. will see a “major productivity jump” 2028-33. “We believe that the jump will be significant, in the range of 30-35 percent, similar to what we saw in the 1950s,” he said. That could mean the addition of trillions of dollars to the U.S. economy yearly, Suri said. Other nations are likely to later see similar productivity growth, including China and India, he said.
Suri predicted sectors from energy to transportation to communications to healthcare will be transformed. Doctors will make digital house calls and annual physicals will give way to continuous health monitoring through sensors, he said, conceding such predictions often prove wrong.
The new revolution is the result of the advancement in central technology and electronics technology and wireless communications, including 5G and the smartphone, the use of the cloud, the speed of computing power and the decline in the cost of storage, said Mohamed Kande, advisory leader at PwC. All the advances are happening at once, he said. "Corporations and businesses are changing … internally from procurement to sales and how they integrate themselves with data,” Kande said. “The on-demand economy, the sharing economy, are all outcomes of the fourth industrial revolution.” The revolution is "just getting started,” he said.
Sprint's Claure said 5G has the potential to create 3 million U.S. jobs. “I don’t see any other project” that could create as many, he said.
Powerful networks, combined with powerful smartphones “have completely transformed, reshaped this industry, like we could never have imagined even 10 years back,” said Bharti founder Sunil Bharti Mittal. He said the demand for spectrum is huge worldwide. Even countries like India, where money is tight, spectrum auctions brought in $30 billion or more, Mittal said.
In Latin America, smartphones make up six of 10 mobile connections, compared with one in 10 five years ago, GSMA reported Wednesday. About 25 percent of connections there are now at 4G speeds. “This growth has been facilitated by a decline in smartphone prices and the increasing availability of handset subsidies and finance offerings by mobile operators,” said Sebastian Cabello, head-Latin America. “Smartphones have been instrumental in establishing Latin America as one of the world’s largest consumers of social media, with the vast majority of usage occurring over mobile networks.” Brazil leads the region with 73 percent of devices being smartphones and 35 percent of connections being at 4G.