Monetization of 5G services might not be based on sheer speed, says Jefferson Wang, Accenture Global 5G Strategy Lead. In fact, in many cases, mobile operators will not be able to charge a premium for 5G, much as customers do not pay extra for 4G service.
Instead, they arguably pay for larger data usage buckets, music or video streaming subscriptions, cloud data storage, with voice and text usage essentially a feature of the access service.
In fact, other things 5G enables might be the actual value driver, not 5G itself. 5G might be seen as a way to enable immersive experiences (gaming, entertainment, training), security (factory automation, health), responsiveness (autonomous vehicles, public safety, machine control).
Source: Jefferson Wang, Accenture
In many cases, 5G will not be the retail product, but a capability that enables a retail product. Consumers or businesses buying 5G fixed wireless for internet access will not be buying “5G.” Instead, they will buy “fast internet access.”
Other customers might be paying indirectly for 5G, as when 5G enables edge computing, which in turn enables some crucial application or application feature. In any logistics or manufacturing setting where many sensors are required, 5G might be the indirect value that enables near-real-time analytics.
The shift of value and revenue drivers away from raw performance is not unusual in the communications business. In the mobile business, coverage matters as much as data speed.
At some point, PC manufacturers stopped competing on “ever faster clock speeds.” Fixed network broadband access providers arguably have not reached that point, as speeds and price still remain the marketing battle essentials.
Mobile operators might, by the end of the 5G era, have stopped competing on “feeds and speeds” and begun competing on other values: use cases that require 5G, much as the value of a smartphone or a PC now is based on all the applications one can access using a device.
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