T-Mobile Typifies ‘Open Season’ 5G Opportunism

T-Mobile US is committed to opportunism in all areas of 5G and “it’s open season for what we’re willing to test and try,” John Saw, the operator’s EVP of advanced and emerging technologies, told SDxCentral. T-Mobile US is committed to opportunism in all areas of 5G and “it’s open season for what we’re willing to test and try,” John Saw, the operator’s EVP of advanced and emerging technologies, told SDxCentral. The carrier’s myriad explorations in 5G use case development is designed to be flexible, giving it room to innovate without the pressure of delivering a product prematurely, he explained. Saw does, however, share the relatively broad belief that mixed reality is an area where 5G can deliver a quick and considerable improvement in capabilities for consumers and enterprises, including frontline workers. The operator has tested augmented reality with one of its outside contractors to improve the process of 5G cell site deployment — a critical area of activity for the company this year. By providing tower climbers with augmented reality eyewear, the company and its contractors can improve efficiency by putting manuals and three-dimensional drawings into their line of sight, Saw said, adding that the technology can also benefit frontline workers in health care, factories, and other industries with 5G connectivity. “I think we’re just barely scratching the surface to make mixed reality scale. When you’re talking about large-scale mixed reality, or you have a concentration of users of mixed reality fans, let’s say in a stadium, for a different viewing experience, or in a factory setting, where you’re using mixed reality to bring experts from all over the world to collaborate, that’s when you need the capacity from 5G,” he explained. These use cases also require the ultra-reliable low-latency communication functionality of 5G that is “just starting to emerge,” Saw added. He claims T-Mobile US is farthest down this path compared to its competitors in large part because of the world’s first 5G standalone (SA) network that it activated last summer.  “That’s the foundation you need to unlock all these full capabilities of 5G that the other guys will not be able to do because they’re still anchored to LTE. They need to cut the apron strings to LTE to really unlock the capabilities. I think capabilities like really low-latency, highly reliable capabilities will only be unlocked once you have standalone 5G, and then that’s how we can scale all these capabilities,” he said.  The operator is working with some of its largest enterprise customers to identify opportunities, pain points and develop proof of concepts to test those concepts out, Saw explained. “All of this is happening right now, and the timing is great because we do have a fairly large 5G footprint already. … I think 2022 is when you start seeing some really good traction in terms of commercial availability.” Enterprises will start adopting 5G for many business objectives by 2024, according to Saw, but T-Mobile US and others have a lot of work to do before that goal is realized. “Proof of concepts first, I think in the next few months, and then you’re going to start seeing commercial rollout,” he said.  “I’m optimistic when I say this, probably more optimistic than my business partners, because we have a strong 5G network today that I can test all these capabilities on right now,” Saw said. Private 5G networks are another somewhat separate component of T-Mobile’s 5G enterprise goals. There are many technical variations of private networks and while there’s “a lot of noise out there” and “a million flavors of private networks,” the broader opportunity is still young, according to Saw.  “Candidly, I think enterprises are still trying to find a formula that works for them,” he said, adding that no enterprise is motivated to build a private network for the sake of it or because it’s such an industry buzzword of late. “They’re all trying to get toward the capabilities that industry 4.0 can bring them. They need to bring artificial intelligence, real-time processing capabilities, machine-learning algorithms closer to their pain points, like on the factory floor, or near the aircrafts and things that they are building. So that’s their motivation.” There are two important factors that must be considered with private networks — expansive connectivity to macro and edge networks, and network slicing capabilities, he said. “No private network can exist as an island” because enterprises will only benefit from good and reliable connectivity to the macro network and edge compute capabilities. “Enterprises will not just go and build your own private network in the absence of connectivity to the larger network, otherwise things will stop working, or they’re going to have a non-seamless experience,” Saw said. T-Mobile US is also exploring network slicing use cases with its enterprise customers to provide directly provisioned access to its network core, transport, radio, and edge computing nodes. “You cannot build an industry 4.0 smart factory using yesterday’s technology,” he said. “5G is the catalyst. We can bring new capabilities like slicing with individualized quality of service as well as the seamless private-to-macro networking that [enterprises] need as they look at distributing their business everywhere,” Saw concluded.