LOS ANGELES — 5G isn’t just another G or a sequel to 4G, Tami Erwin, EVP and group CEO at Verizon Business, said during her keynote at MWC Los Angeles 2019. “5G is so powerful that the best way to think about it is as a wholly new technology.”

Echoing the views of other top executives in telecom, she described 5G as a revolutionary technology that will drive the fourth industrial revolution — a new era powered by mixed reality, IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous vehicles, robotics, 3D printing, and wearables. “It’s the blending of the physical and digital in whole new ways,” Erwin said.

At the event, Verizon announced a collaborative effort with SAP to combine the latter’s Leonard IoT platform, edge services, analytics, computing and data management capabilities with Verizon’s SDN, 5G, its ThingSpace IoT platform, and intelligent edge networking to drive organization’s digital transformation goals. That mixture of edge computing and analytics will create real-time insights for monitoring and logistics, the companies said.

The operator also shared details about its work in Corning’s fiber optic cable manufacturing plant in Hickory, North Carolina, that aims to improve factory automation and quality assurance while the companies collaborate on new 5G-enabled services.

“The network that makes those connections possible is the key to everything else. So even if you’re not ready for 5G today, [understand] it is essential for the future no matter what industry you’re in, that network will transform businesses in three fundamental ways,” Erwin said.

Those include connectivity with smart functions, an opportunity to provide “richly differentiated customer experiences” for consumers and businesses, and “enabling greater operational efficiency” in industrial IoT applications, she said, calling out other 5G partnerships with Xerox, JetBlue, and Anthem. “We’re still in the very, very beginning stages of 5G business applications.”

Verizon was the first operator to deliver mobile 5G (although it was initially a non-standards based network), the first in the world to deliver fixed wireless on 5G and “we see that and the related technologies every bit as important as those past breakthroughs,” Erwin said.

The operator closed out the week with its third quarter 2019 earnings and operating metrics “that are still best-in-class,” according to analyst firm MoffettNathanson. Leading into the march to 5G, “wireless was at the center of almost every thematic growth story in tech. And yet, for all that, growth never got close to [gross domestic product],” the firm wrote in a research note.

“Despite solid subscriber growth metrics, there are a few worrisome signs in Verizon’s Q3 results,” MoffettNathanson concluded. Wireless service margins, subscriber churn, and average revenue per user are starting to ease downward, the firm explained.

“Most ominously, Verizon is no longer the hands-down winner in the most closely watched network performance tests; the question of who has the ‘best network’ is now a much more nuanced discussion,” the analysts wrote, highlighting poor performance and “dismal coverage” reviews of the operator’s early 5G rollout on millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum.

Overall, Verizon’s financial performance in the recently closed quarter was in-line or a bit shy of Wall Street’s expectations. Verizon’s consumer business represents 69% of the company’s total revenues and business generates 24% of its total revenue, according to MoffettNathanson’s analysis. The business segment is also more exposed to weakness in Verizon’s wireline business, it explained.

The firm also criticized Verizon’s “sole adherence to [mmWave] spectrum as the basis of their 5G deployment strategy,” adding that while it positions the operator for high-speed connectivity in dense urban settings, the company’s strategy for coverage everywhere else is exposed to risk. “Without a clear near-to-medium term answer for a mid-band spectrum 5G coverage layer, Verizon risks falling behind,” the firm wrote.

“Until this problem gets solved, Verizon has arguably ceded competitive advantage, at least for a time, to AT&T, which appears better positioned by virtue of its healthy blend of both mid-band and [mmWave] spectrum, and even to T-Mobile, with or without Sprint,” the firm concluded.

Verizon banked almost $5.34 billion in net income, a 5.4% year-over-year increase, on almost $32.9 billion in total revenue, which was up 0.9% during the same period. Verizon’s consumer business generated $22.7 billion in revenue and its business group generated $7.9 billion in revenue.