- CTOs spoke on pure 5G during a lively panel discussion
- All agreed that telcos are more than just utilities
- The execs added that 5G SA has unlocked slicing and more for enterprises
FUTURENET WORLD, LONDON – A gaggle of telco executives decried the "utility" label plastered on them by cloud hyperscalers and others, with one even claiming that cellular service is more important than electricity.
Peter Jarich, head of GSMA Intelligence and panel moderator, asked a group of CTOs and other executives about whether they considered telecommunications to be a utility business. "When I talk to other analysts outside the business a lot of times I hear: 'Yeah, I haven't really looked at telecoms in a while...it's just a utility,'" Jarich noted.
The executives weren't having it. Notably, Oleg Volpin, president of Europe for Telefonica Global, argued that telcos aren't a utility and, in fact, are actually more important. As evidence, he pointed to the recent power and communications outage in Spain and Portugal.
"I can tell you it was much more painful to be without any connectivity for 7 hours – this is what happened – than to be without any electricity for 11 hours," Volpin stated.
What news of standalone and slicing?
As in the U.S., the panelists noted that U.K. and European operators are finally moving into the 5G standalone (5G SA) core realm.
Jeanie York, CTO of Virgin Media O2 noted that the operator started its roll out of 5G SA in 2024. That made it "kind of one of the early market entrants to have the underlying infrastructure to be able to do things like slicing," she said.
York added that 5G SA really gave the operators some of their first new use cases for enterprises. But there's still plenty of work to be done.
"We still have a long ways to go make sure that the connectivity is reliable and available," York said, stating that her company is spending hundreds of millions of pounds doubling down on that 5G connectivity experience.
Unavoidable AI
Of course we couldn't entirely get away from AI. Asked how important AI is to what operators are trying to achieve with 5G, Colin Bannon, CTO of BT Business, said it depends. Internal applications are one thing. But external AI is a whole other beast.
"The whole concept of [machine learning] and AI applied to our own use cases internally, you can start to see success," he concluded. "Where we're not really learning is how to apply that to other people's context."
The takeaway? While internal use cases are coming to fruition, it'll still be some time yet before operators launch commercial AI offerings for an external audience.