Two paths to 5G deployments are emerging: consumer and enterprise deployments. The former is how operators make the vast majority of their revenue. The latter is receiving much interest as it promises a new bump in revenue. Enterprise private networks is not a new idea: it has been slow to realize it because of economics among other factors. New technologies promise to reduce the cost structure. Some equipment vendors, like Nokia, are making a bet on private networks. Operators in their turn are looking to play a role in the enterprise market as the consumer segment reached saturation.
In my view, making a bet on the enterprise segment requires new operating models that the mobile ecosystem has been slow at evolving. Moreover, 5G is not a prerequisite to success in this space: it’s not evident that enterprises are ready to benefit from the advantages that 5G provide. Additionally, competing technologies exist. It may be that applications in vertical markets will take time to mature by which time the 5G ecosystem would be ready. However, this only serves to increase the market risk. Continue reading
Edge computing presents a new opportunity for 
It is fashionable to talk about the race to 5G. This theme started last year, and has picked up this year with many opinion articles published on the topic. Perhaps the one that got most attention is the 
Anyone knows what generation processor running in their laptop? How about which DSL or cable modem technology is serving their house? With 802.11ax starting to come to market, I don’t see anyone rushing to upgrade their access node. When no one is keeping track of ‘generations’ in these technologies, why is it that in mobile it’s all about the “G”? How did this come about and why? And, will it keep being this way? Or will 5G be the last “G”?
The Algiers Smart City Project is more than just another smart city project: It is a platform for talent mobilization. Over the past week, I had the pleasure to participate in the Smart Cities Summit in Algiers and as mentor and judge in the Leapfrog Hackathon and Startup Challenge. These events were designed to focus attention on Algiers burgeoning startup scene and enhance interaction with global actors to address the IDC syndrome. 
Interest in the 3.5 GHz band is increasing as its set to become the global 5G spectrum band. We recently undertook a study for a new research report* of global 3.5 GHz band to uncover the impact on the 5G deployment timelines and ecosystem. One of the fundamental questions is putting figures on the value of the 3.5 GHz band. Our analysis shows that on average 3.5 GHz spectrum is 36% that of 2.6 GHz spectrum. In the meantime, we estimate that a 3.5 GHz network will require 15% more cell sites than a 2.6 GHz network. This leads us to conclude that prices for 3.5 GHz spectrum will rise. We also identified a number of issues that regulators will have to address to improve the value and utilization of this band.
It’s official! Telecom is a utility! The admission comes from service providers themselves. Service providers struggled to monetize value added services to keep from being dumb pipes. Now, it seems that they have resigned themselves to being a utility and are happy to be the pipe. This admission came at the 
It is common to pin the 5G value proposition on its performance, mainly capacity* and latency. These features will enable applications that operators can monetize. However, I will argue here that capacity and latency are secondary to realizing the full 5G value proposition. Capacity and latency make for big headlines and are easy to grasp by the common subscriber. But the true value of 5G resides elsewhere: it lies in the network architecture of 5G. It is not that capacity and latency are not important. However, if we think of 5G purely from capacity and latency perspective, we could misread how the market could evolve. 
In my earlier post, I outlined a 
There are a few myth about 5G that I came about in discussions with executives, investors, smart city officials and other parties active in technology development and planning for new services. Two examples:
Artificial intelligence is in yet another hype cycle – the fourth since the 1960’s. What is different this time from past hype cycles is that it is driven by data from the bottom up as opposed a top-down approach in previous hype cycles. The pervasiveness of connectivity and the Internet make AI applicable in many industries, including telecom. At the year’s 
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