5G: MEN (STILL) AT WORK

The 'slip between the cup and the lip' has become too long for 5G if we look at its actual, on-ground picture of both deployment progress and impact

- PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

Smart fisheries, remote surgeries, intelligent trucks, extreme gaming, real-time farm-tech, private LTE factories, Metaverse, Augmented Reality (AR), low-latency-everything, URLLCmany things; all this is a superb picture of the future that is 'almost here'. All these super-fast, and super-sleek, jets are almost done with all the tinkering. They are waiting in the wings to take off.

Albeit, a hitch. The runway, called 5G, is still being paved.

It is a strong and promising road that is being laid with a lot of fervour and hope. But overall, the ground is still soggy, slippery and unfriendly to hammers and nails. Meanwhile, the world waits with bated breath for all those new flights that can be propelled from this runway. The pilots are ready and passengers are strapped. But the departure screen keeps changing. It does not exactly look on time in many spots.

By 2025, 5G is expected to account for a quarter of all total mobile connections, as per a GSMA report. But would that happen so easily? Consider a recent Analysys Mason's 5G deployment tracker that shows that 44 new 5G networks were launched by operators in 2022; a dip from the 48 launches in 2021. There were also some postponed launches in 2022, attributed to delays in the spectrum allocation process and regulatory barriers. In 2023, there has been only one 5G network launch in Q1. An additional 67 are either in deployment or slotted for a later date. Even in the Standalone genre of 5G, while launches are on the rise in Western Europe and developed Asia-Pacific (DVAP), the adoption remains slow.