Duncan Finlay Head of Enterprise Product and Marketing at Three, sets out the 5G vision and asks if you’re ready to join the journey.
In five years’ time, the communication services we deliver to enterprises will look radically different thanks to the arrival of 5G. It will bring new business cases to the fore and change so much of what we know and do today. The numbers illustrating its potential are everywhere – Barclays suggests 5G could boost UK business revenues by up to £15.7bn by 2025 and we are certainly backing its potential at Three.
But I appreciate it’s hard for boardrooms to understand and imagine how different the world will be, when 5G is such a new technology.
It’s put into perspective when you realise that the same report by Barclays indicates that 72% of businesses don’t know what 5G is.
But you too need to be equipped for success. At Three we’re committed to helping you succeed so we’re exclusively investing in a channel strategy when it comes to delivering 5G to enterprises. We’ll be focusing effort on building the best channel partnerships possible to deliver the extensive range of benefits 5G brings. It’s considered a disruptive step, but that’s our DNA.
We have a strong heritage to build on. Our Three Means Business campaign is driving success by providing more than just mobile services to entrepreneurs going places. We’re already working with exciting verticals like broadcasters on their vast mobile data needs, and our private network capability has made great strides in industries and locations that rely on robust expansive communication links, like Heathrow Airport and one of the UK’s biggest ports.
When it comes to 5G, you can expect to see a whole host of virtual reality and augmented reality applications drop into the market in the coming year. Innovative start-ups through to major brands will take a piece of the action. VR and AR will transform retail by giving people an enriched shopping and leisure experience, and help get complex product sales over the line.
Then of course there is the speed you can expect, which will go head-to-head with fixed line broadband. It’s a very real alternative because it is so flexible and fast – hardware is connected in minutes, no call outs needed. Building sites across the country will be connected before the first foundation trench is dug; pop up shops will be online without any delay. They too will be able to experience the 500Mbps speeds our customers are already experiencing in London.
That’s an important insight for the channel, one that screams there’s an opportunity to become the trusted advisor and to help close the knowledge gap. Business leaders will look to the channel to help decipher the technology, break down the opportunities and establish the business case.
Barclays suggests 5G could boost UK business revenues by up to £15.7bn by 2025 and we are certainly backing its potential at Three Duncan Finlay
Head of Enterprise Product and Marneting at Three
But we’ll also have new experiences laid out before us thanks to 5G’s low latency and fast speed. Everything from powering the communications in semi-autonomous vehicles to fully automated manufacturing production lines is on the to-do list. We’ll see machines that automate the mundane, repetitive jobs relaying critical information in real-time over 5G. In fact, machines will be connected on unprecedented scale, to the extent that there’s the potential for some 1 million devices per square kilometre to be supported by 5G. It means that the benefit to farming, health care, transport and smart cities, and a whole host of other IoT applications will come to fruition thanks to 5G.
We’ll see in car entertainment for passengers, and safety for drivers ratchet up as with things like turn-assist technology. These advances and practical applications will soon help contribute to solving the bigger debates on safety in self-driving cars.
You may be saying, really?
And I bet your customers will be too. But yes, it really is going to start happening. What’s more Three is uniquely positioned to deliver these types of applications because only we have access to 100Mhz of contiguous spectrum that offers a ‘Real’ 5G experience.
We’ve made a £2bn investment in the end-to end network, including the world’s first cloud core network. This all adds up to us having unparalleled speed, low latency, capacity and flexibility. We’ve also maintained investment in 4G technologies too, upgrading sites, improving data speeds, freeing up 4G spectrum and capacity, and deploying new network technologies like carrier aggregation to maximise user experience and performance.
It means we are a cut above our competitors. And if we are, then you can be sure that you will be too when you work in partnership with Gamma. Its team is perfectly placed to help your customers harness the convergence of fixed and mobile.
It means that the benefit to farming, health care, transport and smart cities, and a whole host of other IoT applications will come to fruition thanks to 5G.
In fact, it’s Gamma experience and knowledge that gives us every confidence that channel partnerships are crucial to realising the potential of our 5G investments and the network leadership we have. Your expertise and skill will unlock the potential of 5G and make these use cases a reality. It’s why we want to partner with the best so we can disrupt the market and grow together.
Through the partnership with Gamma we’re offering access to the latest technologies, converged products and a partnership approach that combines our mutual expertise brilliantly in a way that you still own the customer relationship. We believe that together we can make the market predictions a reality.
We’re ready for the future. The only question that remains is whether you are too?
