2021: signals for 5G

Banners advertising new Samsung 5G phones at a mall in
Singapore.

Like many in the tech industry, Keysight has an upbeat forecast for 5G in 2021, tempered with the odd caveat. The company believes that at the front end, manufacturing and network rollouts will catch up with 2020 device launches for better availability, and that there will be a greater diversification of 5G devices with multiple price points.

"Dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) and new national spectrum policies will drive widespread 5G deployment as accessibility to user equipment grows to address current coverage issues and cost of deploying mid-band spectrum," executives from Keysight said.

"However, cell-site zoning issues and related policy will become a bigger issue for national and local governments."

Food for thought from industry observers include:

5G will benefit manufacturers first

"In 2021, the emergence of 5G will be more beneficial to device manufacturers than to actual consumers. With the limited availability of 5G coverage, only certain networks are able to support both spectrums of 5G," said Ryan Holmes, CTO and Co-founder, Hootsuite.

5G revolutionises the mobile back end

"Mobile network operators will invest in modern IT that 'cloudifies' their network architecture – bringing us closer to widespread connectivity and edge processing made possible by 5G. We will become increasingly dependent on modern connectivity to bridge the cloud and edge to people and devices, powered by next generation 5G wireless communications technology," noted Eric Goh, VP & MD, Singapore, Dell Technologies.

"The shift has already begun – moving away from closed, proprietary network architectures to those that are open, industry-standard and software-defined. These investments over (2021) will yield powerful long-term results as 5G unlocks far more than previous generations of wireless connectivity."

Source: Ciena. Changaroth.

"The telecom network infrastructure has been going through significant changes in the last few years with the increasing adoption of automation for operational efficiency.

"In 2021, with the continued build-out of 5G networks including early 5G standalone (SA) networks, as well as increased cloud services adoption by enterprises, this trend of adopting programmable network elements and automation software systems will accelerate even further, both within the Telecom IT software stack, and out towards the access and edge of the service provider networks," agreed Anup Changaroth, CTO, Asia Pacific and Japan, Ciena.

The new apps

"With 5G becoming reality in 2021, Internet of Things (IoT) and innovative applications will start to take shape and will likely create new areas of uses not expected before, changing our mobile experience forever, much more than 4G did," said Ben Chan, Chairman, WOLOT Foundation.

"In China, livestreaming will become a common tool used by the masses to work, promote business, socialise and more, to mix work and life seamlessly and create a new culture of round-the-clock interactions. Data will be stored and processed in a more decentralised fashion with edge computing becoming a reality in 5G, bringing about a more level-playing field for the competition."

Raj Hazra, Micron Senior VP of Emerging Products & Corporate Strategy, painted a different use case. "The fast speeds and low latencies will enable people to truly multitask with their phones as the hub," he said. "Consumers will be able to have multiple applications open at the same time, switching between cloud-based applications as easily as they do on a computer. With all these data-heavy mobile needs, increased demand for low-power memory such as LPDDR5 which will be critical for keeping pace with compute-intensive mobile behaviours without draining battery."

Holmes of Hootsuite thinks the true promise of 5G will only arrive in years to come. "Moving into next year, the availability of this technology will remain limited and few consumers will be able to reap the benefits of interacting on a network with lower latency, faster speeds and greater load capacity. However, in the next few years, 5G will become more readily available and consumers and brands alike will be able to produce and share greater video and augmented reality (AR) experiences on social media from a handheld device," he said.

"We’ve seen brands begin to experiment with AR videos like Burger King to promote specific products, offer discounts or create immersive experiences for consumers. In the coming years, the full potential of interactive ads will be realised with the power of 5G and more consumers will use AR lenses outside of social platforms to engage with brand content."

Automation needed

“Many telco activities are still being performed manually,” said Ronan David, VP of Strategy at EfficientIP. “But the volume and complexity of these operations is growing rapidly, so they have become error-prone and time-consuming. The success of 5G rollout therefore hinges on greater adoption of automation and orchestration by telcos."

According to EfficientIP, autonomous networks will accelerate service deployment and improve operational efficiency in 2021. The company predicts that telcos striving towards zero-touch operations will automate more and more processes and workflows, helped by moving their network functions to a virtualised model.

EfficientIP recommends automatic instantiation and dynamic scaling of services like DNS as they will be key to realising 5G private slice offers for organisations and IoT use cases. 'Single source of truth' inventories for IP data will also come to the forefront, EfficientIP said.

The business realisation

"While businesses and developers start building the 'killer app' that could call out the significance of 5G, early enterprise deployment of 5G will also begin, enabling them to get the first true taste of its potential. This will drive early implementation of network slicing, and push investments to the edge infrastructure, as businesses realise the need to transform the network to keep up with the speed demands of 5G," added Ciena's Changaroth.

Keysight executives concur. "5G will move beyond the smartphone into industrial use cases and the enablement of virtualised healthcare delivery and procedures," they said in a set of 2021 predictions. One of the use cases they named was the use of private 5G networks for industrial enterprises, which they said would facilitate remote operation and management.

Palo Alto Networks belongs to the same camp. Sean Duca, VP and Regional Chief Security Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan, Palo Alto Networks, pointed out that as governments have "their hands full tackling COVID-19 and economic recovery, the private sector is fixed to take over the race to 5G".

"This is something that more enterprises will have to pay attention to in 2021. The sheer number of nodes that need to be installed makes the deployment of such networks that much more challenging, dramatically increasing the potential surface area for cyberattacks," he warned.

"Private sector infrastructure owners cannot afford to deploy the same approaches to designing and rolling out 5G networks, less they fall victim to the same types of attacks as they did in 3G and 4G."

As 5G matures

"In this early stage of 5G planning and launches, the discussion has rightly focused on the ultimate benefits of the technology – increased bandwidth and reduced latency – and the applications it will enable," Vertiv agreed in a 2021 outlook on data centres. There is more to anticipate, however, energy-wise.

"But, as many countries begin their 5G rollouts in 2021, and the early adopters start to drive breadth and scale, the focus will shift to the significant energy consumption increases brought on by 5G and strategies to deploy more efficiently and effectively. The network densification necessary to fully realise the promise of 5G unavoidably adds to the increased energy demands – estimated to be 3.5x more than 4G. The coming year will see greater focus on managing that significant increase in energy consumption by exploring more efficient products and practices."

"As the proliferation of data centres continues and even accelerates, especially in the hyperscale space, those cloud and colocation providers are facing increased scrutiny for their energy and water usage. The amplification of the climate change conversation and shifting political winds in the US and globally will only add to the focus on the data centre industry, which accounts for approximately 1% of global energy consumption. 

"The coming year (2021) will see a wave of innovation focused on energy efficiency across the data centre ecosystem. The benefits for data centre operators are clear, starting with cost reduction, compliance with existing and anticipated regulations, and the goodwill that comes with establishing a leadership position in the global sustainability movement. Look for important innovations across the data centre infrastructure space and especially in the area of thermal management," Vertiv added.