AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile US, and Dish Network executives gave wildly divergent grades to current 5G deployments, though they all seem to agree that more needs to be done in order to support next-generation use cases.

Gordon Mansfield, VP of mobility and access architecture at AT&T, described his views on the current state of 5G as “a little more pessimistic” during a panel discussion at the Brooklyn 6G Summit. He and his counterparts at other operators were asked to grade 5G on a scale of one to 10.

“We’re somewhere in the middle, closer to a five,” Mansfield said. “From a network perspective, all of the national operators are off to a good start at getting deployments done, but the reality is, if you look at all the ecosystem and the applications that you want to put on top of it, that’s where we’re still lacking.”

The foundation exists to realize the speeds and latencies promised by 5G, but work remains in developing the applications that will put those capabilities into users’ hands, according to Mansfield.

“We’ll start to see more of that in 2022, but I think frankly it’s going to be 2023 before that really scales. And I think that’s what’s necessary to get us all the way to a 10,” he said. “It’s not just about the network, it’s about the devices, it’s about the applications that go on top of it, and there’s still a lot of work to do there.”

Karri Kuoppamaki, VP of technology development and strategy at T-Mobile US, offered a more positive assessment of 5G. The operator’s leading position on 5G in the U.S. probably helps to explain that view. 

“5G’s foundation is available practically everywhere,” he said. The operator’s low-band 5G network currently covers at least 305 million people and its mid-band 5G network covers at least 165 million people.

“Relative to where you would expect us to be, I think we are in good shape,” he said. “We have to recognize that things take time. Rome was not built overnight and neither is 5G. So having standards evolve and mature to a point where all aspects of the vision are fully baked, same with deployments and the ecosystem, it just takes time.”

Kuoppamaki graded 5G with a “good solid eight,” but said he recognizes “there’s still a lot of work to do to get to a point where we can say that, ‘OK, 5G is done and we have fully achieved its vision.’”

Konstantinos Halkiotis, VP of mobile access at Deutsche Telekom, awarded 5G standards with a perfect 10, noting that 3GPP is progressing with 5G evolution plans to keep standards development ahead of network requirements and capabilities.

The real-world characteristics defining 5G deployments and average use cases today, however, tell another story. “For the time being, what we have in our real networks, in our deployments, is only enhanced mobile broadband and partially some new uses cases that are focusing on campuses and a little bit on the slicing,” he said. 

“Where do we stand on the users’ perspective? We are more or less at two, up to three,” Halkiotis said.

Dish Networks, representing the only operator on the panel without a commercially available 5G network, also knocked the current state of 5G deployments.

“On standards, I would say we are probably six on radio access networks (RAN) and maybe around eight on the core side,” Sidd Chenumolu, VP of technology development at Dish Networks. Standards on the 5G core are ahead because network slicing is better defined there, he added. 

“From a deployment point, I think we are lagging, so maybe three for RAN and maybe five for core,” Chenumolu said. The majority of commercialized 5G networks are still based on 3GPP Release 15 where the focus remains on enhanced mobile broadband and legacy services such as voice and messaging, he said.