New networks do not sell themselves. Much less will 5G be adopted rapidly (unless the price for doing so is close to zero) by consumers unless there is some compelling reason for doing so. That will take some doing, as 5G continues to get better, supporting virtually all application most mobile users require.
People who download big files will probably be the easiest sell. And the attractiveness will be straightforward for some additional customer segments as applications eventually are reorganized around ultra-low latency. That, though, requires lots more edge computing capability.
Latency will be a tough sell, though. To be sure, 4G network latency—the time it takes for a data packet to make a round trip between two points—was cut in half from 3G, with response times from 15 to 60 milliseconds versus 120 milliseconds.
On 5G networks, latency could drop to 10 milliseconds, making lag times nearly undetectable. But that applies only to the local access on one end of a session. Cloud processing time, far-end local access and any WAN transit latency, are not directly addressed by 5G access on the user edge.
It will be easier to make the argument for 5G for enterprise apps and users, not all of which are “public network” deployments. An estimated 20.4 billion “things” will connect by 2020. That, in turn, is driving potential demand for edge computing.
But much of that demand might not require infrastructure edge (service provider supplied) computing. Enterprises might often find they can do so affordably on the premises (traditional on the site computing). In other cases, devices might themselves do some of the computing.
There are also use cases for private 4G or 5G networks that functionally act like Wi-Fi networks for local area network communications.
In fact, for a long time to come, advanced 4G will be a more-logical value proposition for many consumers. It is in the internet of things and enterprise use case realms where 5G actually offers clear advantages over 4G.
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