Is 5G Overhyped?

Is 5G overhyped? Yes. Is the hype unwarranted? In the near term, perhaps. Long term? The global communications business might well prosper or fail based on new revenue streams created by 5G. So, long term, the hype is totally warranted. 

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Voice Usage and Texting Trends Headed in Opposite Directions

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You can see where this is going. Younger users text more than they talk, and though today's users 25 and above still talk more than they text, the usage pattern is uniform: younger age cohorts text more than older age cohorts.

So as each age cohort advances, one might predict that texting behavior will grow over time. How much it grows is the only real question.

Users 18 or younger actually"talk" about as much as users 55 to 64. One suspects an awful lot of "voice" activity is of the coordination and collaboration sort, so that younger and mid-life workers might be in work groups that require more coordination than workers 55 to 64.
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Lower FTTH Costs Improve the Business Model, But How Much?

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A U.K. group representing competitive access providers claims fiber-to-home network costs now are substantially lower than in 2008, and faster fiber-to-premises investment would be made if some policy changes were made in the U.K. market.
On the other hand, Google Fiber seems to have encountered not so much a network cost issue as a “lack of customers” (revenue) issue with its own fiber to home efforts. And cost reductions might have hit a plateau.  
To be sure, both capital investment and revenue are key components of the business model. But Google Fiber seems to have concluded that even lower FTTH costs (equipment, make ready, construction) are not sufficient if take rates are too low, as the stranded assets problem is so significant at low adoption rates.
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Acquisitions Drove Most Telco Growth Since 2000

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Looking only at markets in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Italy, Singapore and Taiwan, researchers at STL Partners have estimated core revenue losses of 25 percent to 46 percent between 2012 and 2018, potentially.
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It would have been virtually impossible to add that much revenue, so fast, by any organic means.
In similar fashion, Verizon spent $130 billion to buy the minority stake in Verizon Wireless owned by Vodafone, boosting annual revenue by about $22 billion.

Still, even tha…
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