Deloitte recently conducted a survey of 415 executives deploying either 5G or Wi-Fi 6, to find out “why are you doing it?” Some 57 percent of respondents report that their organization is currently in the process of adopting 5G and/or Wi-Fi 6, while another 37 percent plan to adopt these technologies within the next year.
Right now, as you would suspect, 4G and Wi-Fi 5 are the mainstays. But respondents expect 5G and Wi-Fi 6 to be mainstays in three years.
Those executives view 5G and Wi-Fi 6 as a force multiplier for other innovative technologies including AI, IoT, cloud, and edge computing. Indeed, 95 percent of respondents believe 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will be important to unleash the value of cloud computing.
About 83 percent of respondents believe wireless will enable the internet of things, the same percentage that believe edge computing will rely on advanced wireless.
About 91 percent believe analytics for big data also depend on advanced wireless. The vast majority of enterprises surveyed say they are targeting a blend of scenarios with their adoption of advanced wireless networks.
Both indoor and outdoor usage, stationary and mobile devices are expected. Respondents expect to connect employees, machines, and customers. Employee use cases include workplace communications such as messaging and file sharing; device management; collaboration (video, augmented reality, virtual reality, remote workplaces), analytics and virtual network support.
Machine support for sensors and analytics for machine-generated data also will be key. Autonomous vehicles, robots, unmanned aerial vehicles or delivery vehicles are other machine networking use cases. Asset tracking, safety and assembly processes also are expected to be enabled by 5G and Wi-Fi 6.
Customer behavior analytics (shopping, buying, price trends, recommendations, location-based apps); security and fraud prevention (biometrics, location checking and blockchain); asset tracking; enhanced customer experience and supply chain efficiencies are expected.
“5G is not just a faster and more reliable access technology, but also the genesis of a new communications network architecture,” Deloitte argues.
What you might find surprising is that 5G and Wi-Fi 6 are not said to be important because the current networks are failing or troublesome.
More than 80 percent of respondents are “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with a range of traditional performance characteristics of their current wireless networks,
Likewise, 80 percent of respondents are “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” with the security of their networks and data, ability to control and customize their networks, interoperability, scalability, technology maturity, and ease of deployment.
Nor is network age an issue. Some 75 percent of respondents say their networks are less than three years old.
Instead, they are hoping to “unlock competitive advantage and create new avenues for innovation in their operations and offerings.” About 57 percent of respondents believe their company’s current networking infrastructure prevents them from addressing the innovative use cases.
About 87 percent believe their company can create a significant competitive advantage by leveraging advanced wireless technologies.
It perhaps is mildly surprising that so many enterprises envision investments in 5G and Wi-Fi 6 at a time when the current networks actually are working well and are newly-deployed.
To be certain, people and organizations buy “solutions to problems” expressed in concrete software, hardware and connectivity products. In this case, there are no apparent failures to counteract.
The new investments are not being driven by performance issues, coverage, reliability or other network shortcomings, but by hoped-for business advantages the existing networks cannot support.
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