The reality of 5G

There is a lot of good news about the advantages of 5G, but it’s not all good news. The idea that 5G will simply arrive one day with 5G services working smoothly from day one may be implied by all the rosy scenarios, but the reality might be a little different. For one, 5G infrastructure differs depending on where you go.

Source: Juniper Networks.
Bament.

When it comes to rolling out 5G services, there has been no ''one-size-fits-all' approach, explained Sally Bament, VP of Service Provider Marketing, Juniper Networks.

“As we’ve seen in recent months, many of the top service providers are doing things differently. While some have launched 5G networks using high-band spectrum to deliver high speeds to targeted areas; others have compromised speed with a low-band spectrum in order to service a wider coverage area or are betting on the mid-band spectrum.

“Over the next five years, service providers will have multiple ‘layers’ of 5G coverage, depending on spectrum refarming and allocations, each with their own benefits and drawbacks. In addition, Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) will begin to roll out in 2020 and, if successful, will accelerate wider 5G coverage (and allow LTE to remain a workhorse), especially for service providers without low/mid-band spectrum available. One thing is certain: all of these methods will be welcome.”

Source: Cisco. Kaul.

For another, there's quite a bit of infrastructure that will need to be tweaked so that service providers can offer 5G. As Sanjay Kaul, President, APJ, Service Provider Business, Cisco notes, “telecom operators must first embrace transformation of their IP and data centre networks” to make the 5G dream a reality.

5G will introduce “unprecedented pain points—and those without a current solution”, said Patrick Hubbard, Head Geek, SolarWinds.

Many telcos are still upgrading, and the transition could be painful, Hubbard said. “In 2019, we saw smartphone makers like Samsung and ZTE bring 5G handsets to market but users have only been to scratch the surface of 5G’s potential, as telcos and networking companies are still building the infrastructure to support broader coverage of this next generation tech,” he said.

Source: SolarWinds.
Hubbard.

Consumers running applications on a ‘5G lite’ network may experience degraded or unpredictable performance when switching between networks of different speeds, especially since mobile apps are often engineered assuming broadly-available high-performance networks, he elaborated.

“At the same time, monitoring applications running on increasingly fragmented networks will become even more important, pushing developers to optimise applications for all connectivity speeds. Being able to measure network performance will also be key to ensure further 5G infrastructure rollouts are meeting latency expectations.”

Security is going to be a challenge, too

Sean Duca, VP and Regional Chief Security Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Palo Alto Networks, said that today’s problems with 4G networks have implications for 5G as well. “4G networks today are still vulnerable to a myriad of attack modes, from spam to eavesdropping, malware, IP-spoofing, data and service theft, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and numerous other variants,” he pointed out.

“This is a particular challenge for mobile network operators who need to contend with security vulnerabilities, brought about not only by interconnections with other mobile network operators but also the varying security standards of LTE devices.”

Source: Synopsys. Yeo.

Kimm Yeo, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Synopsys Software Integrity Group, also commented on security flaws in current communication technologies and how this will progress as we move to more advanced networks. "Although the adoption of LTE has been broad based, with over 600 carriers in 200 countries deployed, and over 3.2 billion subscribers worldwide (as of 2018), the enhanced user experience and convenience hasn’t come without a price. Several dozen new security flaws related to LTE have been identified through fuzz testing," Yeo said.

"As both cellular and wireless technologies continue to advance to 5G, 6G and beyond, this will not only greatly reduce latency and improve the user experience, it will also open the door to new attack surfaces and attack strategies. It’s extremely difficult to anticipate and prevent such malicious advances in the increasingly connected ecosystems and lifestyles in which we all live. However, this is something we should strive to improve upon in the not-so-distant future."

"Network-based threats that can compromise the availability and integrity of 5G networks will push governments and enterprises alike to adopt cybersecurity strategies as they implement 5G spectrum. As cities, towns and government agencies continue to overhaul their networks, sophisticated attackers will begin to tap into software vulnerabilities as expansion of bandwidth that 5G requires creates a larger attack surface.

"Governments and enterprises will need to retool their network, device and application security, and we will see many lean towards a zero-trust approach for identity and authorisation on a 5G network. Threat detection and threat intelligence will need to be driven by artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) to keep up," Josh Lemos, VP of Research and Intelligence, BlackBerry Cylance said.

The criminal element 

Alvin Rodrigues, Senior Director and Security Strategist, Forcepoint Asia Pacific, said 5G will bring a significant increase in cybercrime.

“2020 will see a rise in the adoption of 5G cellular network technology around the world. Data transfer rates on 5G is well-documented to be 10 times faster than 4G networks. While this will appear to be a promising service for organisations looking to be one step ahead of the competition, the more reliable connectivity and lower latency of 5G will essentially also work in favour of cybercriminals or even employees looking to transfer large amounts of data on the cloud,” he said.

“With the rollout of 5G continuing in 2020, we can expect to see an increase in the volume and speed of data theft. Organisations need to have visibility and control of data movement through cloud access security brokers, data loss prevention and risk adaptive protection technologies.”

5G use cases

Source: Niometrics. Rezende.

5G applications are too expensive, with too little payback says Luis Rezende, VP from network analytics firm Niometrics. "It will not be a smooth ride. In the region, investment on 5G is estimated to consume US$159.5 billion from 2019-2023, or 31% of telcos' total capital expenditures. Additional revenues, however, are uncertain,” he said.

Other industry observers are more upbeat. “Enterprises stand to benefit the most from 5G technology, creating a dramatic change in how telecom operators around the world earn their revenue in the next five years. At present, approximately 30% of telco revenue comes from this segment, but this will go up to about 70% of net revenue in the coming years. E-commerce, financial services, logistics, manufacturing, and agriculture are just some of the industries in our region that stand to benefit the most from the automation and capabilities that widespread 5G connectivity will offer,” said Cisco's Kaul.

Cloud gaming could be the killer app for 5G, said Bament. “The gaming industry opportunity is no longer a secret as cloud hyperscalers have rushed in to get a piece of the action. Turns out, cloud gaming on the move is also one of the hottest consumer use cases of 5G, driven by the need for near-zero latency to render real-time, multiplayer, action games from the cloud. The consumer use cases for 5G will become clearer in 2020 with high definition video, augmented reality/virtual reality/mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) and cloud gaming in the top three,” she said.

Rezende is not as optimistic. “AR/VR, cloud gaming and ultra-high-definition videos, the most promising consumer use cases currently envisioned for 5G, lack clear monetisation paths for telcos. If they do not move quickly with new business models, they may leave sizeable money on the table — just like with 4G," he warned.

*LTE stands for Long-term Evolution, the technology used to deliver communications networks that have better performance than 3G.