Research Note

Abstract

By Stéphane Teral and Stelyana Baleva

Every year in the fall, over 90 top tier analysts are invited to Cowboy Nation (Texas) to gather with the 17 members of the 5G Americas organization for the annual update on the state of the 5G union in the Americas. The event happened in Richardson, TX, on October 11-12, and was led by dozens of subject matter experts representing 17 wireless companies, including network operators, equipment manufacturers, tower and infrastructure companies, and networking software providers. As usual, the U.S. representatives dominated the discussions and the debates.

On Day 1, both the communications service provider (CSP) panel composed of AT&T, Rogers, Telefonica, and T-Mobile US, and the 5G Americas’ Chairman keynote (Ulf Ewaldsson, former Ericsson exec and current President of Technology at T-Mobile US) provided a contrasted picture of the 5G reality: a phenomenal consumer uptake so far but dismal monetization. Well, at least, fixed wireless access (FWA) services are starting to make a positive impact while 5G IoT, which panelists expect to be gigantic, is still in the distant future as we are slowly moving to 5G standalone (SA). By that time, we’ll have 6G, right? Anyway, it was worth attending the scheduled roundtables to collect views from the industry experts on the following hot themes:

- The evolution of open RAN (into cloud RAN)
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G
- Premier initiatives towards 6G
- Advances in 5G radio technologies
- 5G and cloud computing

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