5G risks resembling Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow

Business is growing restless as the much-hyped network revolution has overreached and, so far, fallen short

‘Can you turn 5G off ?” the Sainsbury’s checkout girl asked as we both stared at the spinning circle on my iphone. I was bagged and ready, but the app wouldn’t send my shop to the till, and a queue of unimpressed shoppers was forming behind me. “Once you turn off 5G, it will work properly,” she explained. I did as I was asked, and bingo, it did.

Three years into the much-hyped “5G revolution”, this isn’t what the bosses of EE, Vodafone, 3 and O2 might want to hear. The consumer benefits of 5G remain stubbornly elusive, and now business is getting stroppy too, fed up with waiting for new features they’ve been promised for years. For what we have today when your smartphone display says “5G” isn’t really very new, and last week no industry figure could give me a date for when the real 5G – known in the industry as “5G standalone”, because it doesn’t need a 4G network underneath – might arrive.

The entire 5G saga is one of imperial hubris and entitlement from an industry that has overreached but, so far, fallen far short.

The 5G hype perhaps reminded businesses how underrated and useful their networks are, but businesses that are now looking for positive productivity gains as they rejig their organisations postpandemic are simply cracking on with what’s available. A vibrant private network market has emerged very rapidly to service them.

So what’s gone wrong? The earlier generations of mobile network technology, from 2G to 4G, were all concerned with doing one thing well: radio coverage to the public over a wide area, and at a low cost.

But as mobile networks matured, so too, in parallel, did other forms of sophisticated radio networking, largely used by enterprises.

These operated in the unlicensed spectrum bands, and we all have an example of this at home or work in the form of a Wi-fi router. Pound for pound, this kit is typically cheaper, too, and the licensed and the unlicensed worlds had largely co-existed quite happily.

But after years of being beaten up by investors, the debt-laden mobile operators needed a growth story. So the incumbents set their sights on getting a slice of that business action, and drew up ambitious plans for 5G. This became the first “G” or generation of technology with ambitions to muscle in on the factory floor and into the home, and the feature wish list grew very long.

Not so long ago, the assumption was that the global 5G mania would carry all before it, sweeping up more businesses, and carrying much more home traffic than 4G does today. Triumphalism was in the air, and it was hard not to get caught up. Some of us hoped 5G may even give the fixed line networks like BT and Virgin a run for their money.

In fact, in 2018 5G had looked so inevitable that Ofcom’s then technical director Mansoor Hanif bluntly told the unlicensed sector to get their act together, or become completely irrelevant. To a remarkable degree, that’s just what they did. Traditional technical problems in Wi-fi networks have been addressed, and the pace of innovation has gone from idling into overdrive.

The latest Wi-fi 6E kit now delivers jam today for businesses, rather than promises tomorrow. For example, on Friday Manchester United announced that they had upgraded the stadium network at Old Trafford, choosing the latest version of a very dense, very fast Wi-fi network, rather than wait for 5G. Ironically, it was installed with the help of Verizon, the biggest mobile operator in the US.

Supply chain paralysis and working from home have further delayed the introduction of “real 5G”; today’s 5G boosters are “writing cheques the networks can’t cash for two or three years”, says analyst Dean Bubley. There’s also a growing realisation that you may not need one ubiquitous network quite as much as the mobile giants insist.

“Unless you’re playing Pokemon in the park, or you’re a paramedic by the side of the road, most of your network usage will be in one or two places,”

Bubley adds. There will be places where a private 5G network is preferable, such as hospitals, but these are beginning to look like the exception, not the rule.

Meanwhile, the private network market is thriving. Vendors range from cloud giant “hyperscalers” like Microsoft and Amazon offering “a private network in a box” to smaller builders, who are competitive, agile and experienced. All are technology agnostic.

Have a guess how the mobile industry has reacted. Last week, the European mobile operators trade association ETNO published a report arguing that big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google should contribute to the operators’ costs. Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, is said to be sympathetic.

In addition, the mobile incumbents are also lobbying to grab all of the 6Ghz band of spectrum, which will come up for auction later this decade, for their own exclusive use by 5G or 6G. The Americas, and our own enlightened Ofcom, which has a pragmatic and liberal view of managing the airwaves, disagree, and want to reserve at least a decent chunk for use by the unlicensed sector.

The technology sector has a long history of overpromising and underdelivering, but unless the industry gets its act together, 5G is beginning to resemble Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.