Frost & Sullivan Shares Insights on World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD)
World Telecommunication Day has been celebrated annually since 1969 on 17 May, marking the first International Telegraph Convention and the founding/creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 17 May 1865. In 2005, the United Nations declared 17 May as World Information Society Day, and the two celebrations were combined into World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD). This year’s theme, “Connect 2030: ICTs for the Sustainable Development Goals,” is a good opportunity to reflect on 5G, which promises to revolutionize all aspects of business and society.
Drivers Behind the Adoption of 5G
5G, a new network with extremely low latency and high reliability, will be driven by:
- The explosion of Big Data.
- Growth of the Internet of Things (IoT).
- Needs derived from mission-critical and real-time applications.
5G will become the main access to the internet for most verticals, such as manufacturing, energy, finance, transportation, entertainment, health, agriculture, and more. This will imply a large shift for communication service providers (CSP) as Frost & Sullivan expects them to capture the emerging opportunity that will open up in the corporate segment. Currently, 70% of CSP revenues come from the consumer segment, while the remaining 30% comes from businesses. We expect that by 2025, this picture will change profoundly. At that point, businesses will become the primary source of CSP revenues, with a 55% share versus 45% coming from consumers.
Where 5G will prove to be crucial
While 5G vendors tout a wide variety of use cases, three scenarios illustrate the growth opportunities for this technology.
The first scenario involves the need for low latencies, below 1ms. This is necessary for users to remotely control machinery, trains, or connected vehicles. Some scenarios demand large bandwidth or ultra-broadband, 100 Gbps of peak throughput or 1 Gbps for customer experience. Here we can think of 5G powering ultra-HD video or virtual reality as well as augmented reality applications. Finally, there is a scenario where the salient feature is the density of connections. As 5G promises to handle as many as 1 million connections per km2, it can be used for IoT with this type of density.
However, for 5G to take off and deliver value, CSPs must take a comprehensive and end-to-end approach toward security and privacy, which are still restraining growth.
