Clean 5G, WiFi 6E Won’t Happen in 2021

If 2020 taught us anything it’s that life happens while we’re busy making plans or speculating on what the future holds. Considering how many plans and expectations fell by the wayside throughout much of last year, ABI Research recently flipped its proverbial crystal ball upside down and refreshingly predicted a series of outcomes that will not occur in 2021.  If 2020 taught us anything it’s that life happens while we’re busy making plans or speculating on what the future holds. Considering how many plans and expectations fell by the wayside throughout much of last year, ABI Research recently flipped its proverbial crystal ball upside down and refreshingly predicted a series of outcomes that will not occur in 2021.  It might be a safer bet to contemplate the future from a contrarian perspective, but it’s a mostly uncommon practice among technologists and research firms that cover the industry at large. Technology is often defined by rapid advancements and dramatic shifts in how we live, play, and work, but these transitions typically play out for years or even decades before they permeate society and business. “We have had change thrust upon us all, and the fundamental machinations of standard business processes have been stressed to the point where change has manifested itself as an evolutionary necessity,” wrote Stuart Carlaw, chief research officer at ABI Research. “In this period of uncertainty and change, there is one polestar of unflinching truth: technology will be the most powerful tool in ensuring corporate health. Technology evolution, implementation, and enthusiasm must be embraced by all companies, no matter their tier of the corporate strata or the end market in which they reside,” Carlaw concluded. ABI Research identified 31 trends or outcomes that won’t occur in 2021. Some of the predictions directly contradict the oft-repeated claims of vendors and technology proprietors while others are more widely assumed to be long-term changes that are still distant mirages on the horizon. Network operators will no doubt be disappointed to hear that subscription-based enterprise business models remain a distant reality, telecommunications providers will try and fail in software value creation, and accelerated growth in 5G adoption will strain the environment, thereby rendering any notion of environmentally friendly 5G a false presumption in 2021. This year is also poised to be a “make-or-break year for enterprise cellular business models,” according to ABI Research. With spectrum liberalization arrangements diminishing the bargaining power of spectrum assets held by network operators and hyperscalers developing services for enterprise connectivity, the firm said “mobile operators will not succeed in private cellular.” Cloud-native computing is deserving of the hype, but cloud-native functions (CNFs) and microservices architecture won’t reach mainstream adoption among network operators in 2021, according to ABI Research. “While there is indeed a trend toward CNFs, most of the telco industry is still based mainly on virtual machines (VMs) that run virtual network functions (VNFs),” the analysts wrote, adding that forecast revenue for CNFs remains about one-third of VNFs and the outlook for that ratio remains similar through at least 2025. The analysts also predicted that 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) smartphone shipments won’t reach critical mass in 2021, accounting for less than 5% of global sales. Elsewhere on the 5G front, while carriers have initiated efforts to bring 5G connectivity indoors, ABI Research believes those 5G indoor deployments will be delayed due to COVID-19. It expects mobile operators to largely focus on densifying outdoor 5G networks throughout 2021. The firm also issued a series of predictions related to IoT. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure dominate the market with cloud-enabled IoT and broad capabilities via marketplaces, and that positioning won’t be challenged in 2021.  And even though NTT DoCoMo shuttered its NB-IoT network after less than a year and Dish Network abandoned plans to build an NB-IoT network, ABI Research isn’t ready to call the technology dead on arrival. It does, however, warn that NB-IoT will struggle to break out of the Chinese market where 96% of NB-IoT modules are made and 65% are consumed.  This dominance filters up to the wider IoT segment as well where vendors based in the West will fail to recapture the IoT module market, according to ABI Research. Western incumbents pioneered the market and are “still dominant where it matters as they own the trust of device original equipment manufacturers worldwide,” the firm wrote. One of self-described risky bets rendered by the analysts is that China will not regain its supply chain prominence even after the end of the global pandemic. “The wheels of change cannot be stopped as enterprises seek to diversify their supply chains for three reasons,” including the eventuality of another pandemic, a growing desire among many nations to produce locally, and the ascent of technologies and tools that allow industries to technically and economically diversify away from China are now possible, the firm wrote. ABI Research also predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) will remain a black box and unexplainable in 2021. While some cloud providers have developed tools and frameworks to make AI explainable, “AI built based on these solutions is not mature enough for mass commercialization. Now, most AI models are not designed for transparency, let alone explainability,” wrote Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at ABI Research. Likewise, virtual reality won’t reach mainstream adoption in 2021 because market dynamics have not aligned to enable widespread adoption, the analysts wrote. Finally, ABI Research threw a bucket of ice cold water on WiFi 6E. The technology has showcased value, but its impact will be limited in 2021, according to the firm. The global pandemic has hastened demand for better WiFi connectivity, but regulators in most countries haven’t yet allocated the necessary spectrum for WiFi 6E, chipset availability is limited, and broadband service providers have only recently started upgrading their customers’ equipment with WiFi 6.