While it’s always fun to look ahead and think about the amazing opportunities that new technologies and big industry trends might enable, sometimes you need to sit back and look in the rear-view mirror. The critical part of this exercise is to figure out where the big picture developments that we were all excited about several years actually stand today.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress Americas trade show in Las Vegas, it became clear that when it comes to 5G applications, Open RAN, private networks, and a lot of other big picture telco industry developments of intense interest over the last few years, there has been more frustration than celebration. To be clear, there is progress being made in some areas. However, there was a strong sense at this show that not only are things moving much slower than originally anticipated, but some of the big ideas that industry watchers and participants confidently expected to be here by now may never materialize.
On the positive side, we are finally starting to see some traction with private 5G networks. T-Mobile, for example, had a great real-world customer example with Boston Children’s Hospital. In conjunction with T-Mo, the hospital group is building out a 5G hybrid private/public network to help enable better mobility-based clinical health solutions both within its buildings and out to surrounding communities. The solution is being used to improve call quality, enhance the delivery of critical notifications, and even connect medical equipment directly to the 5G network.
All in all, it’s exactly the kind of solution that many of us expected to see become widespread by this time. But unfortunately, we’re still at the point where a single big private network win is worthy of its own press announcement (something that both Verizon and AT&T have done over the past few months as well). It’s indicative of the fact that progress here is still very slow.
Connectivity to cars is also gaining some interesting real-world examples, with AT&T announcing a new partnership with electric vehicle maker Rivian at this year’s show. Both Rivian’s consumer and commercial offerings are designed as software-defined vehicles (SDVs), which puts even more attention on their trucks’ connectivity capabilities. The OTA (over the air) software updates that other car makers have started to implement for simple fixes of their digital elements are expected to be leveraged by Rivian to enable entirely new sets of features and capabilities. This takes the connectivity part of the car beyond a “nice-to-have” feature to an absolutely essential part of how it operates.
We’re even still seeing a few new twists on the kind of advanced 5G applications that many expected to become commonplace by now. Verizon, for example, in conjunction with Bell Canada, Vodaphone, MATSUKO, and the 5G Future Forum demonstrated what they called the world’s first “transatlantic real-time 5G holographic meeting” where virtual avatars came together over a worldwide 5G network. Like many of the futuristic examples we’ve seen over the years, it’s certainly an interesting concept, though it’s potential real-world use seems a long way off.
And that’s exactly what virtually every vendor I met with in Las Vegas had to say when it came to other big 5G-related developments. Interest in and real-world deployments of Open RAN, for example, were noticeably less this year than has been the case over the past several years. A lot of carriers, infrastructure vendors, and industry observers have started to notice (and acknowledge) that, while the concept of an open set of standards designed to enable a robust set of new ecosystem partners sounds great, the reality of it is not matching the vision. Integration issues have proven to be much harder to overcome. Performance has not lived up to expectations. And economic models haven’t provided the improvements that carriers were promised.
As a result of all this, it’s also becoming clear that many of the cool 5G applications that the combination of new networks along with the overhauled network architectures were supposed to enable are taking much longer than most anyone expected. The net result is a sense of stasis that makes it seem like not much is happening in the 5G world.
In truth, there are important changes in how network infrastructure is being deployed and important evolutions are occurring in RAN environments. However, the focus has reverted back to the basics of moving away from closed hardware systems to basic software-defined networks running on standard off-the-shelf servers. In fact, some of the other news that Verizon discussed just prior to MWC was about its behind-the-scenes work in modernizing and virtualizing its network. It isn’t necessarily a sexy story to tell, but it’s absolutely important to improving the quality of 5G connections.
Along the way, many companies are also recognizing that in carrier environments where you need to maintain extremely high levels of reliability, the idea of trying to put together solutions from a range of specialized vendors may not be the best or most practical way to go. To put it another way, carriers are starting to shift from one set of large companies to another one (i.e., from traditional network infrastructure providers to server vendors and cloud providers) with software solutions coming from these and other big companies as well. That’s a lot different than the early discussions around Open RAN.
Despite these kinds of real-world changes, some in telco industry trade groups and even US government officials are clinging to the hope that the original multi-vendor Open RAN concept will still make it. As a result, there’s funding being targeted at things like new testing mechanisms and other developments that, in the long run, may not ever get used in the way that people currently expect. It feels like it’s too little, too late.
Of course, it’s fair to argue that we are only a few years into the 5G and RAN overhaul transition, and it could be that we will see some of those developments down the road. The telecom industry, after all, isn’t famous for moving at a tech industry-like pace. At the moment, though, it certainly feels like the industry and 5G advancements have moved in a different direction than many had originally predicted. As a result, it might be time to rethink how the industry describes its evolution and adjust its messaging to reflect the new path it is taking.
Disclosure: TECHnalysis Research is a tech industry market research and consulting firm and, like all companies in that field, works with many technology vendors as clients, some of whom may be listed in this article.
Forbes columnist Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community.
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