AT&T’s wireless chief on 5G: ‘Early opportunities are going to be in enterprise’

AT&T’s top wireless executive laid out his vision for 5G, noting that the company’s wireless business contributes 39% of AT&T’s revenues and more than half of its earnings. “We are first where it matters most,” AT&T’s John Donovan said of the operator’s move to 5G. "The early opportunities are going to be in enterprise. “We’re seeing a lot of demand from enterprise customers for blurring the line between what has historically been a wide area network, mobile, with a local area network, which has traditionally been wired,” he said during an AT&T analyst presentation featuring all of the company’s top leadership. Donovan pointed to two specific announcements that AT&T has made recently as evidence of how it plans to play in 5G. First, he cited AT&T’s announcement that it is working with Samsung to create “America’s first manufacturing-focused 5G ‘Innovation Zone’ in Austin, Texas. The goal of the testbed will be to provide a real-world understanding of how 5G can impact manufacturing and provide insight into the future of a Smart Factory,” the company said in its September announcement. Second, Donovan cited AT&T’s exclusive deal with Magic Leap to power the startup’s augmented reality goggles with 5G.Donovan said those announcements are "only really the tip of the iceberg" for 5G, and he said that they hint at "materially different use cases" enabled by the technology. “We are looking at use cases in verticals like retail, healthcare, financial, education, public safety,” he said. “So we're going to take advantage of what we're doing in the enterprise space and all of the verticals and have all of that solutioning carried over into 5G."