AT&T, Sprint, and Cisco Execs Throw Cold Water on 5G

Networking executives from AT&T, Cisco, and Sprint today threw a bucket of cold water reality on the near-term impact of 5G. Their collective assessment of the state of 5G may not be a surprise to most industry observers, but the level of candor on display at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ Edge 2019 conference was a refreshing change from a leading vendor and network operators. Dan Hays, principal at PwC, set the stage for the panel by highlighting the early stages of 5G against the backdrop of previous network technology evolutions. “What you’ve seen with each of these generations of technology is they’ve largely taken about 10 years to evolve,” he said. “They get introduced; there’s a ramp-up where coverage and service quality improves; and then there’s kind of a soak period where they become prominent and the dominant use in the industry.” As recently as July, less than 1% of the United States was covered by 5G, and the rate of device penetration was even lower, Hays explained. PwC is tracking progress and by the beginning of 2020 it expects less than 10% of the U.S. population to be covered by 5G and less than 2% of devices in the market will be 5G capable, he added.