The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) took place in Las Vegas from Jan7-10, 2020 with 170,000 attendees and 4,400 exhibitors. Our focus is on communications, cloud, AI, IoT, and digital transformation. At the start of the new year and the new decade, the transition to 5G is a key inflection point. Arvani Group’s DNC model, which we had devised over 15 years ago and has helped our clients through 2G->3G and 3G->4G transitions, comes in very handy for moving into the 5G era. DNC stands for Device, Network and Content. All three have to be in place for a new mobile network to hit its stride.

Kara Swisher, a veteran tech industry journalist and co-founder of Recode, said on a podcast that CES is no longer where tech news breaks or products get announced, and hence not so important. I respectfully disagree with her. While some companies have decided to create their own venue and timing for their announcements, it is beneficial and productive to have tech enthusiasts to come together in this humongous and exhausting show to see it all in one event. The level of perspective you get on the breadth of technologies at CES is unrivaled. In addition, the networking opportunities are amazing. And, according to CTA (organizers of the show), there were over 20,000 product debuts at this show.

5G was the undertone of many conversations. AI was embedded in many products and solutions, from flying cars to social bots. IoT sensors were all over from smart homes to gaming devices to health monitors.

From Rural Communities to Smart Cities: Use Cases Are Envisioned as 5G Deployments Expand

At the start of the new decade, the 5G networks are expanding fast. In the US, T-Mobile has launched a 600 MHz 5G network covering 200 million people, Sprint has 5G deployed on 2.5GHz spectrum in ten cities, Verizon and AT&T both have millimeter wave 5G deployments at dozens of cities.

The good news at CES was that people are imagining interesting 5G use cases from companies like John Deere helping farmers with precision agriculture to many applications in smart cities such as autonomous people and goods movers, and everything in between such as real-time inventory and AR-enabled customer experiences in retail. The 5G technical features and capabilities – like massive throughput, low latency, high reliability and massive connectivity – are better understood. Still the 5G math must make sense for the use cases to take off as building 5G networks is an expensive proposition. Since 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050, the smart city use cases will have a higher chance of success. The rural use cases bring in new requirements, such as range and coverage across vast areas (not mmWave’s sweet spot) and need more creative business models, partnerships and subsidies to become real.

©2020 Arvani

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Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti, reported that LA is the third largest metropolitan economy in the world after Tokyo and NYC, and the #1 digital city in America citing several examples including mobile 311 service where citizens can communicate their needs with the government, ShakeAltertLA – an earthquake alert app, and 19 million trips already taken on electric scooters.

©2019 Arvani Group

www.ArvaniGroup.com

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The Mobile World Congress (MWC) took place in Barcelona from Feb 25-28, 2019. More than 109,000 delegates came together to showcase the latest in mobile industry. As expected, the big themes were 5G, AI and IoT, which combined together enable Intelligent Connectivity.

By 2025, 15% of all global mobile connections, 30% of Europe’s and China’s mobile connections and almost half of US mobile connections will be on 5G, according to latest GSMA study.

The number of global IoT connections will almost triple from 9 billion in 2018 to over 25 billion in 2025.

Signs of True Digital Transformation – from Traditional Telco and Digital Native

While many in the industry talk about digital transformation, most people are really talking about digitization or digitalization and not true transformation. The emphasis in Digital Transformation must be on transformation. Too many people limit their conception of digital transformation as application of digital technologies like 5G, AI, cloud, IoT, blockchain and others to improve the way people, products and processes work to better address specific business problems. While that is not necessarily a bad frame of reference, it is too confining and provides suboptimal improvements. Such a mindset prevents the complete evolution of digital transformation’s full promise. Transformation should examine the entire business placing customers at the center and creating digital platforms and digital pathways with all having a direct path toward serving customers. An incumbent telco player, and for that matter any industry’s incumbent player, must focus on transformation for three key reasons: 1) Only with true transformation, can an incumbent create a fundamentally new business model that enables significant leaps in revenue growth and profit growth; 2) and perhaps more imminently concerning, to be able to compete with a digital native that will eventually attack that industry. We have a lot more to say on Digital Transformation but will leave further discussion to another time; and 3) Telcos are looking to provide Digital transformation services to enterprises and verticals, so it would be more compelling if they have gone through a true transformation themselves.

Meanwhile, at the MWC show, we were encouraged to see signs of real digital transformation. One excellent example is Vodafone, where the new CEO Nick Read, openly discussed issues with traditional telco industry where the customer satisfaction levels are just slightly above those of the tobacco industry and much lower than those of the financial sector. Vodafone has recently refreshed its strategy with a major focus on customers and creating transparency and simplification around products, services, and customer engagements.

Another example comes from an e-commerce player in Japan, Rakuten. The company’s CEO, Mickey Mikitani, talked about its Rakuten Mobile Network, emerging as Japan’s 4th telco operator. As an outside challenger with no telco legacy, Rakuten is building a fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network. Mikitani called the traditional telco networks a “mystery” that looks like “spaghetti”, a term of art generally used for bad software where additions and fixes have been piled up on top of each other haphazardly resulting in a mess. Rakuten is implementing its mobile network the way an Internet company would do it, in the cloud, and in partnership with key third-party players.

Both of these efforts will undoubtedly encounter bumps along the way. The traditional telco’s transformation journey will not be a walk in the park, as the old what Read called “protectionist” mindset and less-collaborative ways of working will surely be hard to shed. The emerging challenger’s fully cloudified mobile network using a collection of third-party technologies – that all have to deliver in unison to provide all the functions and features that mobile users are accustomed to – will require a herculean effort. Yet, both of these developments can become very significant and potentially mark inflection points for telecom industry’s true digital transformation.

©2019 ARVANI GROUP

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This Arvani update report on CES 2019 covers the annual pilgrimage of tech enthusiasts that went to Las Vegas, where technologies from autonomous cars to meditation hardware converge. Under the slogan CES Ready, a reported 180,000 attendees came to the show, which was a number fewer than 2018. But it didn’t feel as crowded as in the recent years. Maybe the show was better organized. Rumors were circulating that fewer people from China were in attendance. CES is a huge show and we focused primarily on innovations in mobility and connectivity that enable digital transformation.

5G: Focus on Use Cases

Verizon’s new CEO, Hans Vestberg, gave a keynote on 5G as the foundational technology for fourth industrial revolution (4IR). He talked about 5G characteristics as eight “currencies”, including: ultra broadband speeds, massive connectivity, power efficiency, ultra reliability, and super-low response time. He also showcased 5G partnerships with New York Times, Disney, and MediVis. Qualcomm’s booth was a salute to 5G with a live 5G demo streaming virtual reality video on 39 GHz to a prototype phone with a headset. Intel and Nokia Bell labs had set up a demo where users could manipulate a Rubik’s cube which would change its virtual version on screen to showcase 5G’s low latency. Intel is also working on Project Athena that creates a set of specification for PC makers to develop a new class of advanced laptops with big focus on 5G and AI. John Donovan, AT&T’s CEO, called 5G a real-time network that is game-changing for consumers and businesses alike. And, he thinks it will “catch fire”. Meanwhile, a controversy arose when AT&T apparently changed the LTE label on its Android phones to say 5G E (for 5G Evolution) when connected to its high-speed LTE network. Opponents have called this “fake 5G”. T-Mobile showcased its 5G deployed on 600 MHz frequency with streaming 4K video to Intel booth. Overall, a decent showing of 5G at CES with much more to come at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

©2019 Arvani

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The Mobile World Congress Americas (MWCA) took place in Los Angeles from Sep 12-14, 2018. This is the second year that GSMA and CTIA have partnered to put this show together. And, for the first time, it has found a home in Los Angeles. The convergence of telecom and media that had already started is expected to accelerate with 5G networks enabling massive bandwidth to carry high-fidelity content for consumers and enterprises. Los Angeles, the cradle of premium content, is an excellent locale to watch that trend play out. About 22,000 people attended the show. LA will also be a compelling showcase for all kinds of assisted driving and traffic management, as Los Angeles drivers spend over 100 hours a year in traffic. With the 2028 Olympics as the backdrop, LA’s goal is to become a global model city for autonomous movement.

Global mobile operator revenues are expected to grow from $1.05T in 2017 to $1.10T by 2025, growing at about 1% a year*.

©2018 Arvani

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©2018 Arvani

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©2018 Arvani Group

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Key points:

• More than twenty-one thousand delegates from 110 countries came together to discuss and find out about the latest in mobile networks, mobile devices and mobile services.
• North America’s total operator revenues were $259 B in 2016 and projected to decrease to $236B in 2020. The CAPEX will also go down from $37.2B in 2016 to $34.8B in 2020.
• By contrast, Latin America – while a much smaller market – is expected to grow its operator revenues from $75B in 2016 to $88B in 2020. The CAPEX will also grow from $16.9B in 2016 to $17.3B in 2020.
• By 2025, 4G will still account for two third of global mobile user base.

© Copyright Arvani Group 2017.   www.ArvaniGroup.com

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©2016 Arvani Group.

This report is published on the GSA web site with the permission of the author.

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By arrangement with respected independent consultancy Arvani Group, we provide their insightful report from the Mobile World Congress (MWC), Barcelona, February 22-25, 2016.

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) took place in Barcelona from Feb 22-25, 2016. Under the tag line, Mobile is Everything, more than 100 thousand attendees attended.

Major Themes

Great Technical Strides Towards 5G
Virtual Reality
Internet of Things

ALSO
Facebook and Google Getting Deeper into Telecom Infra Business
Few Good Flagship Smart Phones
Operator Collaboration on Mobile Identity
And One More Thing … (maybe two more!)

© Arvani Group www.arvanigroup.com

This document is made available here on the GSA website with the permission of the author.

Opinions expressed in the content posted here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of GSA. The content is provided for informational purposes only.

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