Unlocking the Benefits of 5G for the Enterprise Market

Hall 4 - Auditorium 3

Monday 25 February 13:30-14:30

What will be the key themes you cover in the session?

I will take a close look at why 5G and cellular connectivity are fundamental to get to the flexibility, security, speed and edge compute capabilities which will be required for the next generation of industrialisation. I will explain why the industry is talking about 5G as the next industrial revolution and why we are all so excited about 5G.

What do you see as the most promising use cases in the enterprise segment?

There are enormous opportunities for enterprises and industries with cellular connectivity, and can you imagine – it’s almost untapped today. For instance, almost 90 per cent of factories are still wired. The small share that is wireless today is predominately using Wi-Fi which provides the flexibility, but not the latency, capacity and security required to scale many of the use cases. I will give examples of where we are working with customers and partners across manufacturing, mining and automotive to unlock opportunities with the help of cellular connectivity.

What regions/countries are leading and which need to adopt new frameworks to encourage 5G deployments?

The capabilities of cellular networks today can benefit almost every industry I can think of, and with increased capacity and economics of 5G the adoption will only accelerate. We see significant value across many different segments, for example manufacturing, mining, transport and logistics. We also see strong needs for our technologies from multiple other industries, from utilities to agriculture to health.

How will 5G services help mobile players take a slice of that segment?

Communication service providers will have a central role in the rollout of 5G. They will invest in building these networks with capacity, capabilities and economics to realise the benefits we all see and talk about. For industry 4.0 to happen we need CSPs to invest in 5G in order for enterprises and society to be able to tap into this network as a resource.

5G brings completely different sets of capabilities in terms of latency, speed and revenue potential.

It is truly the generation for industries. For operators, being at the epicentre of the network, this gives them a good position to create value through new services and business models. Exactly which roles different players will play in the future is hard for me to speculate, but what we do know is that investments in critical infrastructure need to be made, new business models to be realised and new partnerships to evolve.

Many believe vertical applications will be vital in helping operators extend their business model: how will 5G enable that?

The increasing value and importance of connectivity to generate instant data and insights is getting more and more critical across many industries. This is a huge opportunity for service providers. I believe there is big value for them to go capture – but they can’t do it alone. Strong partnerships and collaboration across the ecosystem in each vertical are necessary to both unlock and redistribute the value.