According to a 5G use case and adoption survey by Gartner, almost two-third of the organisations are planning to deploy 5G technology by 2020 but are aware of the lack of network readiness of the communication service providers (CSPs). This is because CSPs’ 5G networks are not available or capable enough for the needs of organisations.

Further, CSPs will initially focus on consumer broadband services, which may lead to delay in investments in edge computing and core slicing, which are much more relevant and valuable to 5G projects.

Moreover, Gartner predicted that almost half the CSPs that have completed commercial 5G deployments will fail to monetise their back-end technology infrastructure investments, due to systems not fully meeting 5G use case requirements by 2022. This could be attributed to the fact that most CSPs will only achieve a complete 5G infrastructure on their public networks during the 2025-to-2030 timeframe as they would be focussing on 5G radio first, then core slicing and edge computing.

In order to fully exploit 5G, a new network topology would be required, including new network elements such as edge computing, core network slicing and radio network densification.

Therefore, technology product managers planning 5G infrastructure solutions should focus on 5G networks that offer not only 5G radio but also core slicing and edge computing infrastructure and services for private networks.