For many it may seem too early to be turning attention to 5G deployment but, even though standards aren’t set, the transformation is so complex and multi-layered that now is the time to get started if you haven’t already done so. Here, Helmut Schober, who leads the 5G Services programme at Nokia, and Vikas Dhingra, a consultant at Bell Labs Consulting, now part of Nokia, explain the processes communications service providers (CSPs) should go through in order to define their transformation journeys to 5G.
They also discuss the new Nokia 5G Acceleration Services portfolio and how these can help organisations progress their 5G business models and architectures.
VanillaPlus: Why is now the right time for CSPs to starting preparation for 5G?
Helmut Schober: 5G is happening and there is a lot of pressure for CSPs to accelerate their activity. There’s definitely a push towards 5G and, as a mobile operator, you can’t just wait for the standards to emerge. 5G requires a lot of preparation in terms of business strategy as well as on the network side.
VP: What’s so complex about 5G? Isn’t it just another step in the GSM evolution?
HS: 5G is not simply another radio interface offering a bit more capacity. In the end, it involves a complete restructuring of the whole network. That’s not just to provide more capacity and bandwidth for consumers but to support the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and new use cases for operators.
Vikas Dhingra: When we moved from 3G to 4G, the motivation was the same; to serve consumer demands for more data. With 5G it goes beyond the need for more data and ultimately is about enabling not only new use cases but also new industries that have not existed before. Traditional telecoms concerns of reliability and low latency are, of course, as important as ever but the difference in 5G is more about the business models and partnerships that CSPs need to get into. This makes it far more complex than the transition from 3G to 4G because 5G creates a new market place.
To learn more, read the full article here.
