It is starting to look as though 5G will be a case of “both and” rather than “either or,” where it comes to use cases and business models are evolutionary or revolutionary; reinforcing existing business models or creating new models; providing lower cost capacity or enabling new use apps.
Long term, most agree the big upside is from internet of things and other new use cases.
AT&T sees "materially different use cases" enabled by the technology.
"We are looking at use cases in verticals like retail, healthcare, financial, education, public safety,” said John Donovan, AT&T Communications CEO. “So we're going to take advantage of what we're doing in the enterprise space and all of the verticals and have all of that solutioning carried over into 5G."
With the exception of 5G fixed wireless, which will be an opportunity for some service providers, the early returns will come from ability to support existing consumer mobile broadband use cases, especially when capital investment is incremental and mostly within existing spending budgets.
The importance of legacy revenue streams cannot be discounted. CEO Randall Stephenson notes that the average U.S. household spends around $300 per month on communications and entertainment, generally split evenly between those two.
Basically, spending only grows at the rate of gross domestic product increase, so consumer budgets essentially are fixed. The implication is that no matter how much better 5G is, in terms of value, consumers are not going to spend significantly more money on communications overall.
And if they increase spending on 5G mobility, they will cut back elsewhere.
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