The future is now.
During this pandemic, the level of interaction we’ve had with our customers has not reduced. I’ve been hearing a lot about the challenges CSPs are facing as a result of the rapid increase of data traffic. The demand for 5G is mindboggling. According to Ericsson Mobility Report, it’s been forecasted that they’ll be 3.5 billion 5G subscriptions globally by the end of 2026. In South East Asia and Oceania, 5G will account for 32 percent of mobile subscriptions, and in India, 27 percent by 2026.
Consumers have also acknowledged that 5G could have helped them during COVID-19. In a recent Ericsson study, 42 percent of smartphone users surveyed wished 5G had been rolled out faster so they could benefit from higher speeds. In terms of consumer potential, CSPs in South East Asia, Oceania and India could earn up to USD 297 billion in cumulative 5G-enabled consumer revenues by the end of the next decade. Additionally, the 5G business potential is enormous, presenting up to USD 41.3 billion in revenue opportunity for CSPs in South East Asia, USD 17 billion in India and USD 14.3 billion in Australia by 2030.
Accelerating 5G for enterprise
At Ericsson, we’ve been helping our customers accelerate their end-to-end 5G evolution. In Australia, Telstra reached 5G end-to-end standalone capability earlier this year, connecting a cloud-native 5G Core to handle new 5G New Radio Standalone traffic.
Building on that, we recently announced with Telstra our collaboration to develop an enterprise edge cloud solution specifically for the Telstra domain. This partnership follows our collaboration last year with Telstra and a large financial services institution in Australia to trial 5G edge computing and will help drive innovation across industries by developing solutions to help enable seamless service orchestration, network exposure and service assurance. These are all important milestones, and I’m extremely proud of how we have come together to co-create with Telstra.
In addition, we are also actively working with enterprise partners like ABB Thailand to develop 5G business solutions. This partnership is the first in Asia Pacific and is part of a global strategic partnership signed between our two companies in 2019. Together, we are establishing our joint vision and cooperation for future flexible production with automation systems and wireless communications as part of Industry 4.0 and digitalization.
Co-creating the future with our customers
Innovation is in our DNA. I’m convinced that co-creating with customers will bring us closer to our 5G future. Today, we are collaborating with leading CSPs worldwide, more than 40 universities and technology institutes and 30 industry partners, to better understand new use cases, and support our customers.
Our objective is to create a thriving 5G ecosystem. We always encourage our customers to secure a first-mover advantage to give them time for the ecosystem to mature, and for markets to capitalize on the efforts.
To further accelerate our customers’ innovation in this region, we have established 5G innovation centers including a 5G Garage in Singapore with Singtel and Singapore Polytechnic, a 5G innovation center in Malaysia with Celcom and University Technology Malaysia and a 5G innovation centre in Thailand with Chulalongkorn University. As a result of these collaborations, a variety of use cases were unveiled, such as 5G-enabled remote field assistance, 5G-enabled autonomous vehicles, and AI for tele-medical services.
As a technology leader, this is our commitment to our customers: to lead the acceleration of 5G enterprise business potential and unleash the full value of connectivity.
If you want to learn more how to best prepare your core network for 5G, and how we can support you throughout this journey, read our guide to building a cloud native 5G Core:
In my next blog, I’d be talking about how we can help CSPs take charge of their evolution journey to 5G, starting from now. The future is now!
Useful links and further reading
Ericsson Enterprise Mobility Report Nov 2020
Consumer Lab Report 2020
Harnessing the 5G Consumer Potential report
5G for business report: a 2030 market compass
Blog post: 5G pushes importance of first-mover advantages to new levels
Read more about Core network
