5G 2021 analysis – CSP and enterprise opportunities

5G certainly captured the attention of enterprises at a very early stage of its roll out – many expect the technology to have a transformational impact on the way they do business. But what are the applications they plan to deploy using 5G? Which vertical industries represent the most value for enterprise 5G?

In 2020, Beyond Now worked in close collaboration with senior Omdia analysts to develop a report that gave an overview of the 5G opportunity, its potential and what had been achieved so far. It presented an extensive analysis of all the B2B 5G projects up until 2020, examined what worked and what didn’t, and what learnings CSPs could already take from the early days of 5G roll out.

The study found that 72.3% of telcos already believed that most 5G revenues would be derived from B2B, B2B2C, or government/smart city opportunities. But, according to Omdia’s analysis, until that point only one in five 5G enterprise projects had been led by CSPs. One year ago, it looked like the enterprise opportunity could very well slip through the fingers of CSPs. The report concluded that the right approach to seize the 5G enterprise opportunity is a business-first, vertical solution-first, partner ecosystem-centric strategy.

Download the 2020 report here

Now, one year on, Beyond Now and Omdia have revisited 5G market developments and the progress CSPs have made and what steps they have taken to reap the benefits of 5G. We noted that CSPs are no longer trapped in their thinking, but we wanted to dig deeper to see if this is just a change in mentality, or if CSPs are really implementing the right 5G strategies. Are they putting partners and customers at the center of their 5G strategy? Is their ecosystem strategy fit for purpose?

In 2021 the number of enterprise 5G projects have doubled in just one year. But interestingly, the number of CSP-led projects slipped from 21% down to 16%! It seems that although CSPs understand the opportunity for providing private networks and 5G solutions to the enterprise, they are still slow to act on it. We dug deeper to understand why.