It is not hard at all to find observers who basically say they are let down by 5G and that it has not lived up to its promises. That is fair enough, even if the networks still are under construction, spectrum is still being activated and sexy new use cases and applications are yet to be commercialized.
We could have, and many did, have the same complaints about 3G and 4G before 5G. Undoubtedly, some will have complaints about 6G.
While each digital generation (2G through 5G) has eventually produced innovations not seen before, that process of emergence does take time. It would not be unusual for five or more years to pass before anything approaching ubiquity occurs.
For starters, any national network in a continent-sized country can take three or more years to build. Developers cannot make assumptions about network capabilities much before that. Add a couple more years for adoption to reach critical mass. That is about five years. Add another couple of years for developers to really start proving in new use cases. That adds up to seven years.
And all along, it will take time for people and entities to figure out where the value lies, for firms to raise money, refocus developers and then market their innovations.
It really should no longer come as a surprise that development takes longer than many expect. Important information technology innovations can take a decade or more to be fully understood and adopted by organizations, for example. Results can take even longer to be quantifiable.
The productivity paradox seems to exist. Before investment in IT became widespread, the expected return on investment in terms of productivity was three percent to four percent, in line with what was seen in mechanization and automation of the farm and factory sectors.
When IT was applied over two decades from 1970 to 1990, the normal return on investment was only one percent.
This productivity paradox is not new. Information technology investments did not measurably help improve white collar job productivity for decades. In fact, it can be argued that researchers have failed to measure any improvement in productivity. So some might argue nearly all the investment has been wasted.
So the productivity paradox is not new. Massive investments in technology do not always result in measurable gains. In fact, sometimes negative productivity results.
Information technology investments did not measurably help improve white collar job productivity for decades in the 1980s and earlier. In fact, it can be argued that researchers have failed to measure any improvement in productivity. So some might argue nearly all the investment has been wasted.
Some now argue there is a similar lag between the massive introduction of new information technology and measurable productivity results, and that this lag might conceivably take a decade or two decades to emerge.
The Solow productivity paradox suggests that applied technology can boost--or lower--productivity. Though perhaps shocking, it appears that technology adoption productivity impact can be negative.
The productivity paradox was what we began to call it. In fact, investing in more information technology has often and consistently failed to boost productivity. Others would argue the gains are there; just hard to measure. Still, it is hard to claim improvement when we cannot measure it.
5G is not so different. Neither was 4G or 3G. The better analogy might be the improvements in fixed network internet access (home broadband). Applications now are different because bandwidth climbed from less than 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps. They will change again as we move into multi-gigabit capabilities.
But early 10 Mbps was not a failure. Neither was 100 Mbps and neither will 1 Gbps eventually prove out. We have had 30 to 40 years of consumer bandwidth growth. We did not see massive leaps at the beginning of each of those transitions.
We keep looking for such leaps with every mobile generation, since each mobile generation has increased bandwidth by 10 times, with 10 times lower latency. And yet great change has happened. Personal computers once were the connected devices. Now smartphones are the connected devices. Next up, sensors and machines will be the connected devices.
Email once was the lead application. Then we started using websites with audio and video and image. Then we started doing transactions. Now we watch video, listen to audio and play networked games.
We used to have PCs tethered by cables; now we are untethered on phones, tablets, watches and TVs.
It takes time. So disappointment with 5G should be expected.
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