Experts are all eyeing 5G to enhance opportunities for communication service providers beyond their traditional markets, but they are however faced with the million dollars question on everyone’s mind on how to capture these opportunities, Head of Solution Area Business Support Systems at Ericsson Middle East and Africa, Murat Sahinoglu has said.
According to him, standing above previous generations, 5G would give operators the opportunity to evolve their position in the value chain, playing three distinct roles such as Network Developer, Service Enabler and Service Creator.
These roles, he added, would allow operators to provide increasing value from 5G network infrastructure, and they could provide tailored connectivity solutions through a 5G digital platform for business customers to build their own processes and would be able to offer massive services around Internet of Things (IoTs) and enable new digital services to collaborate on use cases beyond just communications.
“At Ericsson, we believe that by setting the right goals for digital Business Support Systems (BSS), service providers can define new business models to monetise 5G.
“As the first company that has launched live commercial 5G networks on four continents and the provider of core solutions that are supporting 2.5 billion subscribers from 2G to 5G, our team at Ericsson has been involved hands on with 5G technology, evolution 5G and evaluating use cases of today and tomorrow,” the Ericsson boss said.
Sahinoglu, who described the next step in BSS to be “Business-to-Business (B2B), IoT, and Edge, which has to do with handling devices at IoT scale while supporting new revenue models and billing-on-behalf, explained that the step would be focused on supporting enterprise customers.
The final step, he added, would be Full IoT Ecosystem, in which IoT and Edge partners are customers, suppliers, or both at the same time.
“Use-case demands the capability to very quickly define, deploy, and adapt new offerings to capture new business opportunities when it comes to 5G.
This means BSS will have to provide partners with tools that can request network capabilities, present configuration options, determine prices, and orchestrate the order—all in real time and without human intervention in a step-by-step approach,” Sahinoglu said.
He cited a recent MIT Technology Review Insights report, where senior Information Technology (IT) and network executives at telecommunications operators worldwide, including the Middle East and Africa, were asked to evaluate how they are preparing for the opportunities and challenges of 5G, and particularly how business model shifts will impact IT, network operations, and business support systems.
Sahinoglu listed the four groups that should be considered in the 5G/IoT business context, to include: Enterprises and industry verticals that require solutions beyond telecoms; New types of suppliers such as IoT device providers and suppliers of eSIM (embedded SIM) and related technologies; Platform providers that specialise in specific IoT or edge clusters or groups of use cases such as massive and broadband IoT platforms, industrial IoT platforms and content data networks; and Integrators that specialise in specific verticals such as asset management, mission-critical services or automotive that combine capabilities from multiple stakeholders to address consumer needs.
“Looking at the traditional network developer role, a service provider acts solely as a cellular connectivity provider by offering solutions such as radio, core network and communication services while models are consumer focused,” Sahinoglu said.
5G is a fifth generation of mobile technology which is an improvement of today’s 4G technology with enhanced capabilities.
The technology provides the platform for new and emerging technologies such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data.
