Carriers Need Changed Mindset, Partnerships to Thrive in 5G World, Experts Say

“What often gets lost in this is that telcos, globally, are very good at optimizing operations,” said Arpan Tiwari, Deloitte managing director-technology, media and telecommunications: “They know how to do this. They have done this for decades and decades.” With 5G there are opportunities to increase revenue through partnerships and by offering specialized solutions for customers, he said. Carriers have to invest to grow and that will take “a culture change,” he said: “It’s a fundamental shift in how carriers have operated.”

“You either go into the war or you go home,” said Azita Arvani, Rakuten Mobile's general manager-Americas. “You need to be based in the cloud. You need to have very agile architecture.” All major carriers will have to rely on partnerships, she said.

Customers aren’t looking for new products, “they’re trying to solve a problem, and they don’t want to be experts in technology or telecommunications,” said David Joosten, Vodafone Americas regional director. He sees opportunities for monetizing 5G in healthcare, manufacturing and logistics.

Vodafone recognizes it needs to rely on other companies and it can’t do everything itself, Joosten said. Vodafone tried to go it alone in the past, and that didn’t work well, he said. “We do need an ecosystem,” he said. “As a telco we will do some things ourselves, but we’ll be very specific what,” he said: “For us, it’s massively important to choose the right partnerships.”

David Rolfe, senior director-product marketing at platform provider VoltDB, warned that data is both an asset and a potential liability for telcos. “The traditional thing was … let’s store everything forever in case one day we need it,” he said. “You can’t do that now.” It’s already illegal in Europe to store data without a good reason, he said: “It’s becoming illegal in California. It’s going to be illegal everywhere sooner or later.”

Rolfe said the “sheer quantity” of data carriers could gather “dwarfs absolutely everything you’ve ever done before.” As recent history shows, data leaks can emerge as huge problems for carriers, he said. Throwing data away when you don’t need it “is probably a lot safer and smarter and more defensible than sticking in it a data warehouse,” he said. Traditionally, carriers “got away with absolute murder” on the data they retained, he said.

Because of their reputation for “sober, sane behavior,” customers will trust carriers with their data more than they will trust tech companies, Rolfe said. “That needs to feed into your data strategy, which needs to think in terms of always process, sometimes store, instead of always keeping data.”

Other speakers said current global chip shortages could affect 5G deployment. “It’s more than a bump in the road,” said Keith Mallinson, analyst at WiseHarbor. T-Mobile already had problems deploying its fixed wireless offering because of supply issues, he said. “It does impede the overall development of the market,” he said: “It’s unfortunate.” With growing demand for more sophisticated chips, chipmakers will likely move to provide them more rapidly, but “that’s a big financial commitment,” he said. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” he said.

The next wave of 5G and the demand for consumer devices will require more sophisticated chipsets, but that’s probably one or two years away, said Neil Shah, Counterpoint Research vice president-research. That should be when current investments in building fabs will mean more chips are available, he said. The start of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 taxed the system, when people started working at home, he said. The annual demand for electronics grew in double digits “and the industry never planned for this,” he said.