Will 5G and IoT be the tipping point for xVNE?

For the last few years CSPs’ Wholesale and MVNE business has been struggling to cope with growing commoditization. The MVNE market hasn’t managed to achieve any breakthrough, in spite of regulatory changes and 4G adoption, and the ensuing MVNO business model is mostly leveraged for sub-brands and no-frills brands. But is that about to change?

Is there something more in it for CSPs?

Just looking at the new-tech combination of 5G and IoT – this brings together higher connectivity needs with critical applications reliant on connectivity to many industries and use cases that are not using them today.

For the CSP, there is a tsunami of technology change rapidly approaching – ranging from new technology almost upon us – IoT, Cloud, NFV/SDN – followed closely by e-SIM, 5G and AI. With the biggest challenges for CSPs being how to differentiate and add value in a saturated marketplace – surely there is a way to leverage the emerging technology to create new growth opportunity.

The well-worn retort that CSPs should combine new-tech use cases and services with connectivity to create wider, more attractive offerings to their customers has been said often enough.

5G is built on a foundation of three technology pillars relevant to IoT:

1. Higher throughput for enhanced mobile broadband – addressing ever-higher throughput requirements e.g. mobile-gaming and enhanced video services
2. Ultra-reliable low latency communications – enhancing many of the existing industrial, medical, drones and transportation requirements e.g. autonomous drive and industrial automation
3. Greater scalability for massive machine type communications – catering for the broader set of IoT applications with a high number of endpoints i.e. the connected world ecosystem.

The use cases for 5G and IoT will be so fundamentally different to classic connectivity that it will open up a radically new business model opportunity for CSPs.

It’s clear that 5G is more than just another network technology – rather it is an enabler for a set of IoT use cases which require specialized connectivity solutions leveraging high data rates, rapid scalability and very low latency.