Why do you want 5G? The answer right now, if any, is pretty boring. It’s probably either around overcoming congestion or getting better home internet.
Today T-Mobile is announcing its latest attempt to jumpstart new 5G applications, a project called “5G Forward” combining a developer platform, a physical innovation-center building, and partnerships with Qualcomm, Disney, and Red Bull.
To be honest, it’s really hard for me to get excited about it. I’ve seen way too many incubators and attempts over the years: A 5G hackathon in 2017, Verizon’s startups lab in 2018, a T-Mobile accelerator announcement in 2019, and more. T-Mobile’s 5G accelerator site has a video from 2021 on it.
None of these efforts seem to have resulted in any deployed consumer or industrial applications for 5G. We do not now have widespread 5G game streaming, or remote infant care, or artificially intelligent 8K surveillance cameras. (That last one is probably good.) So it’s worth asking why T-Mobile is hurling itself at this wall again, now.
There Are 5G Networks Now!
For one thing, there are actual networks now. T-Mobile President of Technology Neville Ray said 40% of T-Mobile users have 5G devices and almost 50% of the total traffic on its network is 5G.
“We’re at this point now where [with] the breadth and capability of the network, you now have an ability and a network there to commercialize this stuff,” Ray said. “Folks are really starting to enjoy and leverage the 5G network that we built, and we need a much stronger push in innovation in the 5G space.”
The Achilles heel there is that a lot of these 5G customers are having basically 4G experiences. They aren’t getting the benefits of 5G-only features like quality-of-service, network slicing, and edge compute, which have been touted for years but haven’t yet been implemented on a broad basis.
“QOS and capabilities in slicing are going to be essential, especially in the IOT space,” Ray said, but he couldn’t give a timeline for when those network capabilities would come online.
Developers who come to T-Mobile’s lab will be able to play around with edge compute and private networks, said John Saw, T-Mobile’s EVP of advanced and emerging technologies.
“The table stakes [for those things] is you need a [standalone] core, and we have already rolled out an SA core,” Saw said.
I think Qualcomm’s involvement is also key here. While T-Mobile wants to tout its partnerships with Disney and Red Bull, I’m skeptical of any Disney 5G initiatives because Disney already had a 5G partnership with Verizon starting in 2019, and little came of it. (T-Mobile, for its part, say its better 5G coverage will make the difference.) Qualcomm, on the other hand, is desperate to make augmented reality happen, and might put its back into doing so.
Certifiably Easier
Carrier certification is one of the major barriers to creating new 5G devices. Devices running on GSM 2G and 3G networks don’t require formal carrier certification. That lets all sorts of phones, modules, and oddball devices connect to the networks. But starting with 4G, the US carriers have been able to restrict uncertified devices from their network. (Their policies have shifted with time on this, but they’ve had the power to do so.)
Saw said that carrier lab certification can take “an exceedingly long time” and cost $80,000-$100,000 per device, and “if you’re a small startup, good luck.” (If you wonder why more international phone firms don’t sell unlocked devices in the US, this is part of why.)
T-Mobile’s solution is to give developers kits of pre-certified modules and SIM cards with 500MB of data, “removing all the speed bumps,” Saw said. The dev kits will be available at devedge.t-mobile.com this summer, the carrier says, and the first 1,000 units will be free.
But the speed bump of not being able to use uncertified devices, the way you could in the 2G and 3G eras, is alas still there.
Will T-Mobile’s “5G Forward” push 5G forward? I think that after five years—five years!—of hearing about hackathons and applications that may never come to fruition, it’s time for carriers and developers to launch something great, or to stop putting out press releases.
