5G might not be a complete flop, but it’s sure in jeopardy of falling flat. Consider how far 5G has come and yet how little it’s achieved or inspired. Where are the killer apps? What’s the business model? These challenges persist and show little sign of waning anytime soon. 

Next-generation technologies commonly require a little breathing room to find their way and gain mass adoption, but the general lack of enthusiasm and trigger mechanisms to pull more people into 5G’s orbit could portend a rough slog for mobile network operators. 

5G networks continue to mature and improve but “we're still lagging on a couple of critical dimensions,” Dan Hays, principal at Strategy&, PwC's strategy consulting business, said in a phone interview. 

5G Lacks Compelling Use Cases

Adoption remains lower than expected, and “the other thing that has really been disappointing is the lack of truly compelling use cases and applications that harness the power of 5G,” he said. “At the current time, most people really perceive 5G to just be a potentially faster version of 4G. And in particular, since the experience on 5G continues to be uneven at best, it's hard to make the case that 5G creates a compelling value proposition over and above 4G.”

Indeed, that remains the No. 1 question among players up and down the 5G value chain, according to Hays. “5G is still a your-mileage-may-vary experience.”

This presents operators with unclear paths to make a return on their 5G investments and a continued smattering of tales about how carriers might achieve top-line growth through the development and advancement of new services. This aspiration and drive frequently results in broad statements like 5G’s ability to play a key role in the metaverse or mobile gaming, Hays explained.

Systems Integrators Better Positioned for Private Networks

Even more well defined opportunities like private networks, which have attracted tremendous interest along with experimentation and trials, have yet to answer important questions like who is going to integrate and operate these private networks, he added. 

Meanwhile, near-term use cases include LAN applications at campuses and factories while WAN use cases in industries such as transportation and logistics require more ubiquitous 5G coverage, Hays explained. 

“We believe that there’s actually a sizable opportunity for companies that can bring all the pieces together and make it seamless because, let’s face it, cellular engineering is not a skill set that most enterprises possess,” he said, adding that operators haven’t made much traction in putting together the capabilities necessary to build private networks for enterprises.

“It's just as likely, if not more likely, that the traditional systems integrator community will be the ones to jump on this opportunity because they're already immersed in the IT environment of these large enterprises,” Hays said. 

5G Standalone Core Lag Exemplifies Larger Challenge

The absence of fully baked use cases and business models for 5G also partly explain why so many operators have yet to deploy 5G standalone cores. It’s not so much that technology advancement is standing in the way of these outcomes, but rather that near-term expectations don’t yet necessitate additional infrastructure upgrades, he explained. 

Advanced services such as network slicing are dependent on a 5G standalone core, but “all of this is also evidence of a larger challenge for the 5G ecosystem, which is these new network capabilities such as slicing, and such as ultra-low latency, really don’t have business models readily available to support them,” Hays said.

Operators are confronting many challenges around 5G, some of which, but not all, explain the relatively slow deployment of 5G standalone cores. There’s also the issue of timing because the technology wasn’t quite ready when many operators in more developed countries started to formulate their 5G plans, he added.

The more pressing question, according to Hays, remains: “As operators who are investing in the infrastructure, how do we monetize some of these capabilities in an era and an environment where people really only understand the paradigms of data tonnage and data speeds?”

Pricing models for network slicing and latency are underdeveloped and the needs are poorly understood, he said. 

“It's a big business model challenge for the network operators even before the technologies are rolled out,” Hays concluded. “There’s some innovation yet to come in this space."