How to make your business 5G ready

If the pan­dem­ic has served to prove any­thing in busi­ness, it’s that digi­ti­sa­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty are the here and now. The Covid cri­sis has accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal adop­tion by sev­en years, accord­ing to a glob­al sur­vey of exec­u­tives by McK­in­sey.

The most obvi­ous next step in that process is the instal­la­tion of the UK’s fifth-gen­er­a­tion mobile phone net­work, 5G. Despite the government’s deci­sion to veto the use of Huawei equip­ment, which has delayed the nation­al roll-out, now is still the right time for busi­ness­es to pre­pare for it, accord­ing to many experts. But where to start? 

The roll-out schedule 

In mid-2019, the UK became one of the first nations to start rolling out a pub­lic 5G net­work, focus­ing ini­tial­ly on towns and cities. About 10% of the country’s total area has been cov­ered so far. The gov­ern­ment has set a tar­get of remov­ing all Huawei tech­nol­o­gy by the end of 2027.

Robert Franks is man­ag­ing direc­tor of West Mid­lands 5G, which is part of the government’s test pro­gramme. He believes that, while the Huawei deci­sion has been a set­back, pub­lic 5G net­work cov­er­age could reach crit­i­cal mass in as lit­tle as two years’ time, although the roll-out may take far longer in rur­al areas.  

Franks notes that 5G will be made avail­able in a series of releas­es, each offer­ing dif­fer­ent capa­bil­i­ties. “Although some advanced fea­tures can be accessed today, depend­ing on the type of ben­e­fits required, a com­pa­ny may pre­fer to wait until those fur­ther releas­es,” he says.

Who should oversee a firm’s 5G adoption 

Any busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion needs some­one to lead it. While the CIO would nor­mal­ly take charge of a tech-based project, it’s impor­tant to think beyond those in charge of IT infra­struc­ture, because adopt­ing 5G will enable a busi­ness to devel­op new goods and ser­vices. So says Fred­er­ic Huet, part­ner at tele­coms con­sul­tan­cy Alt­man Solon.

“The con­nec­tiv­i­ty that 5G pro­vides is clear­ly linked to prod­uct devel­op­ment, as well as the sup­ply chain. There­fore, avoid silos and embrace col­lab­o­ra­tion across depart­ments,” he advis­es.

Huet stress­es how impor­tant it is not to think of 5G in iso­la­tion. Many oppor­tu­ni­ties lie in its com­bi­na­tion with tech­nolo­gies such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, big data ana­lyt­ics and the inter­net of things.

Creating a 5G strategy

It’s vital to under­stand 5G’s capa­bil­i­ties and pos­si­ble use cas­es before devel­op­ing a detailed busi­ness strat­e­gy based on these, says Ian Bou­quet-Tay­lor, oper­a­tions direc­tor at AE Aero­space, who urges firms to “real­ly bloom­ing think before you start”. 

His com­pa­ny is work­ing with West Mid­lands 5G, Eric­s­son and BT to imple­ment three 5G use cas­es aimed at increas­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, cre­at­ing new rev­enue streams and improv­ing both cash flow and work­ing cap­i­tal. These projects are part of a plan to dou­ble AE Aerospace’s turnover in the next three years. 

The firm had a series of con­ver­sa­tions over two months about what 5G could enable it to do that Wi-Fi couldn’t, Bou­quet-Tay­lor recalls. 

“This is impor­tant, because we are build­ing a pri­vate 5G net­work and invest­ing in sen­sors, servers and oth­er tech­nolo­gies, all of which is expen­sive for an SME,” he says. “We there­fore need to know what the return on invest­ment will be.” 

Once it has a clear plan in place, a com­pa­ny would be well advised to use one of the gov­ern­ment-backed 5G test­beds, says Franks. “This will pro­vide a prac­ti­cal under­stand­ing of what the tech­nol­o­gy can do, and what’s involved in imple­ment­ing and run­ning it, before you have to com­mit large amounts of mon­ey.” 

Bou­quet-Tay­lor agrees. “Start small, test it to ensure that it works, then expand,” he advis­es. For instance, AE Aero­space is tri­alling one new 5G appli­ca­tion on five of the 19 machines on its fac­to­ry floor. This enables it to run dig­i­tal and man­u­al sys­tems in par­al­lel, so that not all machines would be affect­ed if some­thing were to go wrong. 

Finding the right 5G partners

Com­pa­nies next need to think about sourc­ing the tech­nol­o­gy and con­sid­er whether to use a pub­lic or pri­vate 5G net­work, advis­es Huet. 

“This will depend on the evolv­ing needs of the busi­ness,” he says. “Ask your­self: do we need broad­er cov­er­age or some­thing more localised? And would it make sense with regard to the price per megabyte or con­nec­tion for us to have a pri­vate net­work? For near­ly all com­pa­nies, it’s most like­ly to be about secur­ing a good con­tract with a net­work oper­a­tor.” 

A firm might choose to start with the pub­lic net­work for tri­als and then move to a pri­vate net­work if that makes finan­cial sense, Huet sug­gests. 

Antho­ny Kary­dis is the founder and CEO of Mativi­sion, which is work­ing with the gov­ern­ment test­bed pro­gramme to make its immer­sive con­tent plat­forms 5G ready. He believes that using a pub­lic net­work presents a sig­nif­i­cant risk for busi­ness­es, includ­ing his. 

For the 5G Fes­ti­val, a vir­tu­al live music event planned for ear­ly 2022, Mativi­sion will be con­nect­ing artists across the coun­try. “This will rely total­ly on the avail­abil­i­ty of 5G cov­er­age in each artist’s house. With­out this, many appli­ca­tions won’t work,” he says. 

There’s also the ques­tion of whether to opt for a man­aged ser­vice provider or not.  “The for­mer offers sim­plic­i­ty, as there is a sin­gle part­ner respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing the entire ser­vice,” Franks explains. “Doing it inde­pen­dent­ly would give you more con­trol and cus­tomi­sa­tion, but your capa­bil­i­ties would need to be high.”

It’s unlike­ly that many organ­i­sa­tions will have all the skills they need in-house, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the short term, accord­ing to Paul Beast­all, tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy direc­tor at Cam­bridge Con­sul­tants. 

“We have a need for more skills in the indus­try,” he says. “This is a tech­ni­cal growth area.” 

Beware of the common 5G pitfalls 

While 5G is an excit­ing tech­nol­o­gy that holds much promise, it’s impor­tant to cut through the hype, Beast­all warns.

“My appeal is always for peo­ple to be appli­ca­tion-dri­ven, rather than chas­ing a tech­nol­o­gy just because it’s new,” he says. “Test­beds are a good way to con­nect with both inde­pen­dent experts and peo­ple using the tech­nol­o­gy to find out more about what it can do for your busi­ness.”

It’s also impor­tant to man­age employ­ees’ expec­ta­tions and invest in train­ing them, Franks says. He learnt this after West Mid­lands 5G, work­ing with BT and the Uni­ver­si­ty Hos­pi­tals Birm­ing­ham NHS Foun­da­tion Trust, ran a “con­nect­ed ambu­lance” tri­al that enabled para­medics to per­form remote ultra­sound scans over the 5G net­work. One of the par­tic­i­pants com­ment­ed that, unless the tech­nol­o­gy was incor­po­rat­ed in the para­medics’ train­ing, it would be impos­si­ble for them to use it.

“It’s cru­cial that lead­ers think about the change man­age­ment and process re-engi­neer­ing that’s need­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when humans are involved,” Franks stress­es. 

To this end, AE Aero­space will be work­ing with Aston Uni­ver­si­ty next year on a pro­gramme designed to trans­form both process­es and behav­iour, accord­ing to Bou­quet-Tay­lor, who says that the 5G project was his sole focus for two months.

“This can be all-con­sum­ing, so you will need time and tech­ni­cal sup­port,” he stress­es. “This is not the same as 4G. It’s not like open­ing a box and plug­ging some­thing in.”