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The much-hyped 5G technology has not lived up to its promises, according to a whitepaper released by SK Telecom. The primary reason for this disappointment lies in the infrastructure requirements, resulting in incomplete coverage. Moreover, a lack of compatible devices and applications has hindered the expected innovations associated with 5G.

Before being falsely implicated in the spread of COVID-19, 5G gained attention for its potential applications. Marketed as a successor to LTE with lower latency and faster speeds, 5G has now become just another connectivity standard. While 5G cannot be considered an outright failure, the anticipated improvements have not materialized as expected.

The deployment of 5G for high-risk tasks like mining, where low latency would be particularly valuable, is not as widespread as hoped. The promised 1ms latency remains unavailable for most consumers. SK Telecom acknowledged in the whitepaper that services such as autonomous driving, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), Extended Reality (XR), holograms, and digital twins, which were expected to benefit from 5G, have not fully met expectations. The company suggests that a more objective perspective was necessary to assess whether 5G alone could usher in the envisioned future or if the overall service environment was adequately prepared.

Several factors have hampered the fulfillment of 5G’s ambitions, including device immaturity, low demand, and regulatory issues. Additionally, 5G requires a greater number of base stations compared to LTE, making its rollout a costly endeavor for telcos. In many regions, including South Africa, coverage remains inconsistent, and the speed difference between 5G and previous standards might not be immediately noticeable to most users.

One positive aspect highlighted by SK Telecom is that 5G offers cheaper data costs compared to LTE. Consequently, 5G users consume 50% more data than their LTE counterparts, although this may vary across different markets.

Despite these shortcomings, SK Telecom’s whitepaper explores the potential of 6G and how it can be effectively marketed. The telco emphasizes the need for collaboration among ecosystem participants to develop exclusive products and services unique to 6G, leveraging synergies and paradigm shifts. The emergence of new device types like XR, UAM, self-driving cars, and holographic watches may contribute to the proliferation of 6G-only offerings, necessitating the monitoring of technology development trends and the preparation of network infrastructure to support them.

Mass adoption of 5G is still in progress, with only 13% of the global mobile market currently utilizing this technology, as per Statista. Given the substantial investments made in 5G deployment, a shift to 6G is unlikely to occur in the near future.

For more details, please refer to SK Telecom’s full whitepaper.

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