The mere attention spans that 5G continues to get, from not only the Operators, but the global ecosystem of Hyperscalers, Industrialists, Governments, Enterprises – is not just unparalleled, but also indicates its potential value creation and belief of what 5G can offer to the community !
The value is created for the ecosystem because 5G gets interpreted, defined and executed by this ecosystem itself (and not just influential bodies like the previous Gs).
This value creation makes 5G a much beyond enabler unlike previous Gs.
The way 5G has been contributing and is slated to evolve, is very unique
On one side there is significant work going on in 3GPP and other standard bodies, continued to be led by specific vendor partners, encouraging networks towards “openness” and “programmability” and encouraging service-based architectures.
On the other side there is this continuously developing ecosystem of Industrial & technology forums like GSMA OP, 5G FF, 5G ACIA, Camara, Nephio etc led by operators & cloud companies, enabling subscription or consumption-based model for “Network as a Service”, “Context as a Service”, “Function as a Service” and so on …
Whereas, there is another front evolving with government bodies and private networks for IIOT4.0 requirements, where need for closed loop automation and enabling intelligence at the edge is on the rise through the likes of Govt UK, VEPP India, FCC US, etc)
Beauty of above three front creations is – each of them is working to make 5G capable for the complete ecosystem (5GS = UE + RAN + Core + IT + Platform) – so that the data currencies (value) created from the 5GS can be capitalized – and does not remain just for organic consumption on just one front.
Some of the highly anticipated and sought after 5G currencies those will be created in near future (already being established in certain geographies) are – the location proximity, device Some of the highly anticipated and sought after 5G currencies those will be created in near future (already being established in certain geographies) are – the location proximity, device context, application driven policy, quality of service, traffic influence, network abstraction and so on …
These currencies were available during previous Gs too, but there were questions on capacity and capability – either the network wasn’t created to capitalize on these currencies – or the standards didn’t evolve to allow the capitalization – or the ecosystem of UE wasn’t available to absorb the service and experience that can create an end-to-end service chain from network to service to business to device.
Now that, all the three said fronts, are working and collaborating to impact this larger 5GS – there is a big market realization, that there is so much that 5G can offer – if the said currencies are capitalized to create open and simplified access through a horizontal aggregated platform play for multiple vertical use cases.
With this ecosystem coming together – it is giving birth to a newer segment – The B2B2X.
Where operators, cloud partners and hyperscalers are intersecting towards private networks, industry verticals and open-source organizations (application developers) over data, control and management planes allowing these 5G currencies to be leveraged owing to latency and bandwidth inspired by Edge Cloud and Open Networking.
This intersection will need to exposed network capabilities, fulfil real time application journey and thrive on edge decisions via application programming interfaces to enable these emerging B2B2X models – this will be the key for automation and service driven future networks.
