some unanticipated but recently realized limits to the outcomes it can deliver. Rather – and as is often the case with new, groundbreaking technologies – the blame for not meeting any hype goes to the marketers who created premature expectations by pushing something before it was ready. In a rush to be firstmovers or counter first movers in the consumer space, the major wireless carriers, quite simply, got ahead of their skis. And too often, what was pitched as 5G wasn’t actually 5G, or it was a purely consumer-grade service. “The marketers, kind of, let us down again by pushing 5G when it really wasn’t 5G,” said Neil Farquharson, sales engineering and marketing director at ConectUS Wireless, a Verizon reseller. “So when we start talking to customer about the prospects around 5G, they’ve already switched off; they assume it’s more vaporware.” At the risk of eyes rolling to the back of heads, things are different now. Some seven years since the first U.S. 5G business trial, real-world cellular networks – as opposed to test in a lab – are rapidly approaching gigabit speeds, while enterprise wireless internet services are forming and SLAs are being drafted. What’s more, large chunks of 5G bandwidth are coming on board. In other words, we are about to experience the long-anticipated disruption of true broadband wireless for business. Some are even equating things to the early days of business internet and the massive rush to deliver T1, DSL, cable modem services, and the like. For the sake of clarity, wireless in this discussion is limited to cellular, towerconnected services such as 3G, 4G, LTE and 5G, as opposed to point-to-point service, Wi-Fi, wireless private networks, satellite or any other service under the umbrella of “wireless access.” And it’s important to keep in mind the massive investments the major carriers have made to build their super-fast 5G/LTE networks. “AT&T and Verizon have bet the farm,” said Glen Nelson, partner, vice president of marketing and business development at NHC, also speaking on the CVx panel. “If they fail to recapture that investment, it will be the case our children and grandchildren study as an example of a huge technological failure.” And getting adequate returns on the almost-unprecedented levels of investment in fiber, infrastructure, spectrum and licenses to build out 5G and beyond, many industry participants and observers argue, will require more than what can be gained from consumer or prosumer services alone. Already, we are hearing rumors of “enterprise products” on the horizon, with guaranteed levels of bandwidth and performance. Certainly, speeds and performance are approaching and surpassing adequate levels, at least in terms of download speeds. According to extensive tests of live cellular networks taken across Europe and North America during a six-month period in 2022, 5G services were approaching gigabit speeds nearly two years ago, with latency as low as 10 milliseconds. The test results from CELLSMART, which provides cellular intelligence in real-world situations, found that the top download speeds exceeded 780 Mbps in outdoor tests, while the global average outdoor download speed for 5G was 210.05 Mbps. That includes an average North America download speed of 172.02 Mbps. T-Mobile, for its part, was among the top carriers worldwide with an average download speed of 351.69 Mbps. The CELLSMART survey collected data from 21,456 network speed tests conducted in 67 countries and 1,350 locations between March 25, 2022, and October 31, 2022. 5G is still providing “hyper-asymmetrical” test results, said CELLSMART, with an average outdoor upload speed of 26.78 Mbps. Even so, “The survey results demonstrate that 5G is maturing and beginning to deliver on its promise 5G Maximum Download Speeds: Outdoor (Mbps) Spain 993.00 United States 966.00 Austria 921.10 France 803.96 Norway 789.00 5G Maximum download speeds: Indoor (Mbps) Norway 994.00 France 898.00 Spain 753.00 United States 735.00 Germany 619.00 Source: CELLSMART SMB Internet Access Levels, 2022 Less than 1 Mbps 1% 1 to 5 Mbps 2% 6 to 10 Mbps 8% 11-20 Mbps 10% 21-50 Mbps 14% 51 to 100 Mbps 22% More than 100 Mbps but < 1 Gbps 32% 1 Gbps or more 11% Source: IDC 12 THE CHANNEL MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4Njc=