SK Telecom argues that 5G didn't achieve its original goals

[Alfonso Maruccia]

A hot potato: 5G was initially hailed as an unparalleled technological revolution in broadband cellular communications. However, the actual products related to 5G have fallen short of being revolutionary. SK Telecom now believes that the industry needs to progress by creating a more distinct and captivating vision for the upcoming generation of mobile networks.

SK Telecom, the largest wireless carrier in South Korea with over 30 million subscribers, is part of the prominent industry conglomerate SK Group. The company has recently released a white paper addressing 6G networks. In the realm of the next generation of mobile broadband, there are valuable lessons to be gleaned from the deployment of 5G, which, according to the SK Group, fell considerably short of the industry's initial expectations.

The second chapter of the white paper, aptly titled "5G Lessons Learned," asserts that current 5G services have not achieved the ambitious promises made back in 2019. Despite having been in commercial use for four years, the white paper notes, the technology behind 5G alone has not truly been transformative.

The fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks was solidified through the ITU-R's 5G Vision Recommendation and published by the UN agency in September 2015. As the industry geared up for 5G, innovative and groundbreaking services like fully autonomous driving, UAM, holograms, and "digital twins" were the talk of the town. However, when these services eventually entered the market, many of them fell short of meeting the anticipated expectations.

SK Telecom's white paper contends that the telecom industry should have adopted a "more objective perspective" regarding 5G. The paper suggests that the issue wasn't with the performance of 5G networks, but rather with the "excessive expectations" set for technological innovation that these networks were assumed to bring.

According to SK Telecom, these services represented what 5G could theoretically achieve, yet they have not become a part of customers' everyday experiences. A combination of factors, such as device form factor limitations, immature devices and service technology, lack of market demand, and regulatory challenges, hindered the full realization of the 5G future that the industry envisioned years ago.

SK Telecom suggests that unlike the significant technological leap experienced during the transition from 3G to LTE speeds for internet cellular broadband connections, 5G did not introduce a major technology advancement. Nevertheless, 5G successfully delivered faster connections to a broader global audience, achieving an estimated 70 percent reduction in cost per gigabyte compared to LTE. Customers using 5G can now consume 50 percent more data than those on 4G or previous mobile standards.

The mobile industry should take lessons from the mistakes and shortcomings encountered during the deployment of 5G as it looks toward the next generation of cellular data networks. SK Telecom emphasizes the need for collaboration among the entire ecosystem of companies and carriers to pave the way for 6G. This involves establishing clearer expectations for 6G products and services and avoiding a fragmented architecture. The aim is to provide customers with a higher level of service quality than what has been achieved with existing 5G services.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99873-sk-telecom-argues-5g-didnt-achieve-original-goals.html

 

[wiyosaya]

News alert: Surprise, surprise! A tech did not meet its goals and we need more marketing drivel because

the industry needs to progress by creating a more distinct and captivating vision for the upcoming generation of mobile networks.

Maybe people are just tired of being milked every other month by technology they don't need, do not want, and don't care about - WTF? We need to be able to download the entire internet in a fraction of a second to a phone??

 

[human7]

If there was only one kind of 5G that was widely available and fast, as opposed to the really fast but low coverage 5G and the high coverage but not-much-different-than-4G version, then perhaps 5G could have been transformative. I get the technical reasons for the many variants of 5G, but that practical limitation is ultimately what prevented 5G from being transformative.

As for how 5G could be transformative, I never bought into the IoT hype around it. It's not like cities were deploying smart traffic systems everywhere (or whatever kind of cellular connected device-in-the-field that would improve our day to day lives). However, another competitor to traditional ISPs providing 100Mbps+ reliably everywhere? Now that's where the real excitement is. But, it didn't happen too much. It still could happen, and it has happened in places, but there's more work to be done.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the only real hype around 5G seemed to be around geopolitics, and the tech that is the star of that show these days is semiconductors.

 

[Lew Zealand]

"lack of market demand" for the foolish crap listed by SK Telecom is 100% accurate.

Not because the consumer is more discerning of course, rather the consumer uses 5G for completely different foolish crap that marketers are (luckily?) unable to predict.

 

[MyIOnU]

LOL faster for what? You still tie up to limit data plan anyway.

 

[kiwigraeme]

LOL faster for what? You still tie up to limit data plan anyway.

I thought the same think when 5G came out only good in countries with very cheap or free data -plus 4G good enough for most things when good coverage .

Same used to be for broadband - we have now made your internet faster - so you can now use all your monthly cap in 4 hours and not 8 - had images of supercars sitting in the garage with 2 gallons of fuel for the month

Again for Supercars - here in NZ max speed is 100km - except one small highway it might be 110Km - lots of judder bars , near schools etc - do they even get out of low gears and economy gear ??

Like having a beautiful ******* that you can not *******-- eg a perfect peach you can't eat

 

[someOtherGuy]

If there was only one kind of 5G that was widely available and fast, as opposed to the really fast but low coverage 5G and the high coverage but not-much-different-than-4G version, then perhaps 5G could have been transformative. I get the technical reasons for the many variants of 5G, but that practical limitation is ultimately what prevented 5G from being transformative.

Not to mention that this was a city tech: 4G was already flaky in some places but you had the 3G backup. Now in the States you have 5G, basically with line of sight, and otherwise 4G, which is the same one that needed the 3G backup. All the mobile carriers suddenly found the convenience of wifi calling (which sucks, most of the time).

 

[SirDigby]

Pretty sure all that was rolled out was 5G antennas, but it's still been a largely 4G core, at least in the UK. 5G was meant to bring a lot of enhancements in the core which I'm still not sure are implemented yet, and are meant to enable much of the promised 5G benefits end users are meant to see and still haven't (much faster speeds, latency). I know a lot of people who disable 5G on their phones because it's slower than 4G, they never put in much capacity for it, but were all rushing to be the first to have it in X city or Y city.

 

[Puiu]

When the majority of "5G" is just fake 4G then it is obvious why it "didn't achieve its original goals"

 

[Burty117]

Pretty sure all that was rolled out was 5G antennas, but it's still been a largely 4G core, at least in the UK. 5G was meant to bring a lot of enhancements in the core which I'm still not sure are implemented yet, and are meant to enable much of the promised 5G benefits end users are meant to see and still haven't (much faster speeds, latency). I know a lot of people who disable 5G on their phones because it's slower than 4G, they never put in much capacity for it, but were all rushing to be the first to have it in X city or Y city.

Here in the UK, 5G is just a joke really, I got "actual" 5G a couple of times, once in the middle of London and I was speedtest'ing at 300-400Mbps, and the other time was at Silverstone Race Circuit, I got 900Mbps down.

Everywhere else I get 5G, it's the same or worse speed than 4G, I've actually found myself turning 5G off on my phone at times because the 4G connection is more stable and quicker.

I travel for work and tether a lot when I'm staying at hotels or at client sites when I've not connected to their WiFi (or the wifi is down). 5G is more often than not, worse than a 4G connection, it's a joke.

 

[toooooot]

Prices barely got down. Instead, they slowly increased prices and added more data.
I look for a better cellphone plans time to time.
I can't find anything better than my ancient family plan.
I am disappointed and now know what to expect from g6--nothing.

 

[Wye43]

5G is supposed to reach 20 gbps
Instead we have 50-200 mbs.
4G has become the new "no signal" flag. That used to be 3G.

 

[hwertz]

No kidding. Hype meets reality. What does 5G really get the telecoms and the end user? Higher capacity (more data/calls per mhz), higher top speeds, lower latency.

What did the hype claim? That it would unlock new types of usage (like VR environments, 4K streams, etc. -- despite the fact that you could do this even on a 3G network if it was running fast enough.) They had this fantasy that.. something... would prompt this massive increase in subscribers and revenue... they were never really specific about this, just claiming the somewhat higher speeds would magically get users to, I don't know, buy 2 or 3 cellphones a person or something... it seriously didn't make sense. They even had this fantasy (both for 5G, and for 4G) that factories would ditch their wifi and ethernet networks to monitor factory equipment, instead paying some cell co to stream out the factory data over 5G, then back in over 5G to the monitoring and control systems.

They also conflated 5G itself with SDR (software defined radio), which has been around since the 3G days (although more commonly used with 4G). Remote radio heads (where the radio is up on the cell site instead of on the base, which gets better range and "cleaner" signal) which again is nothing 4G or 5G specific (just possible due to more modern, smaller radios that are small enough to mount on the cell site). And modernizing the backend to use IP instead of a mix of telecom technologies (like physical phone lines running to the cell sites for voice calls and such) that was used in the past. That was to be able to claim massive cost reductions, when in reality all of those cost reductions could be implemented even on a 3G network (let alone 4G or 5G.) Given SG Telekom's trend to run a modern network, they likely had implemented all of these before 5G came out, so they may have gotten a rude surprise if they listened to the marketing instead of their engineers regarding expected cost reductions.