Experts Say 5G Is Disappointing Average Consumer So Far

The average consumer finds 5G underwhelming so far, said Jaydee Griffith, Next G Alliance managing director, during a Wednesday RCR Wireless webinar. The technology has met expectations in some areas but not others, several experts said.

Consumers don’t think that the wireless industry “got 5G right,” Griffith said. “5G had a lot of promises and then didn’t deliver them all.” The standardization process was “incredibly robust” and many features are available, yet industry stakeholders aren’t offering products that support the available features or building the needed “ecosystem.”

A newcomer at the Next G Alliance, Griffith said the group exists to support 6G “from research to realization,” the latter meaning 6G must “actually meet the needs of the market” and make customers “happy,” he said. “That’s a key piece that I think is sometimes forgotten.”

The view of 5G in one Middle Eastern country is that providers will stop when they reach the government-mandated minimum, Griffith said. Providers in that nation believe 5G costs more “and doesn’t do anything more” than the 4G network. Carriers there are also taxed at a higher rate for 5G deployments, he added.

Some argue 5G is “a solution in search of a problem,” said Sameh Yamany, Viavi Solutions chief technology officer. If that’s true, “what is 6G going to be for?” We have yet to see the “killing use cases” for 5G.

The conventional wisdom is that the even-number Gs are more important than the odd, Yamany said. 2G “was a significant leap” that “fixed a lot that 1G didn’t think about,” he said. 3G embraced the concept of “faster data speeds and browsing the web," but 4G solved “a lot of the problems and gaps” in 3G, and was “almost the rise of mobile broadband.” 5G isn't “about phones anymore” or “just faster internet,” he said. 5G focuses on how to restructure networks.

A lot of “good things” have happened with 5G, though they haven’t always met expectations, Yamany noted. 5G isn’t everywhere, “but we’re seeing it in major country deployments with major operators.”

5G has successfully made the radio access network more flexible, said Jonathan Borrill, head-global market technology at Japanese gear-maker Anritsu. But this flexibility added complexity to the network core, he said. The big challenge is “how can we give flexibility without adding complexity?" he said: “That’s the thing maybe we missed a little bit on 5G and should be a challenge for 6G. Keep our enhanced flexibility, but reduce the complexity.”

Some operators are delaying moving to stand-alone 5G networks as they wait for 6G, Borrill said. There’s a case for waiting for the 6G core, which may offer “a much more efficient, much more simple way of delivering on the industry verticals,” he said: “Then the switch to 6G is much more about the core” and carriers may keep the 5G RAN. “It could be a lot more about the core network as we move from 5G to 6G.”

As the industry moves to 6G, networks will become more disaggregated, Griffith predicted. AI is “the newest, most popular buzzword” in the sector, he said. “As we see a lot more compute-intensive applications, we’re going to see a lot more disaggregation.” Open networks depend on interoperability, he said. “To have a healthy, competitive marketplace, you do need that interoperability” and there are challenges, but ones that can be overcome.