All Posturing Aside, 5G is Coming

One always hears quite a lot of posturing when one generation of networks is about to be superseded by the next generation.

Some will tout their leadership in deploying early. One sees this now in public statements by Korean and Japanese mobile carriers, as well as Verizon.

But one also hears lots of warnings, or cautions, from many other service providers. The typical refrain is that “there is lots of life left for X,” or “there is too much hype about the coming Y.”

Those are reasonable statements, if posturing nonetheless. Eventually, even those who warn about hype wind up getting ready for the next generation, for that next generation is coming, inevitably. So it is that T-Mobile US, which recently has touted both its progress in 4G, and has warned of hype around 5G, now will be testing 5G.

There always are business drivers for all the statements. Leaders tend to be those carriers who believe they can afford early deployment, have ample spectrum assets, financial strength and whose positioning involves “leadership” in the market.

Fast followers tend to be those firms that have made recent and expensive investments in the latest versions of the present lead network, that are more capital constrained, or have other business reasons for balancing capital investment with acquisitions and other actions.

But 5G is coming, and perhaps faster than many would normally expect.