SINGAPORE: With stiff competition eroding margins in the telecommunications space, operators have been looking for additional revenue streams to boost their bottom line. The implementation of 5G gives operators the opportunity to offer new services to both enterprises and consumers. Recent research by Frost & Sullivan predicts that the new value-added services could potentially become a bigger contributor to sector revenues than basic connectivity services, driving the 5G market in the Asia-Pacific region to reach US$124.8 billion by 2025.

“Mobile operators are aggressively entering the 5G space to grasp opportunities presented by expanding their portfolio, in order to increase revenues and improve customer experience,” said Sofea Zukarnain, Research Associate, Information and Communications Technology at Frost & Sullivan.

“To enjoy the full potential of 5G, mobile operators ought to focus on industry partnerships and collaborations, which will reduce overall costs and hasten the deployment of the new use-cases enabled by the introduction of 5G,” she added.

Frost & Sullivan’s latest research, 5G in Asia-Pacific, Forecast to 2025, discusses in detail the progress of implementing 5G in the APAC region, and presents an in-depth country-wise analysis of the market, along with comparisons against global benchmarks. The research also highlights the various use-case scenarios for 5G, identifies the upcoming growth opportunities in this space, and provides strategic recommendations and forecasts for the sector through to the year 2025.

The 5G market in the APAC region is poised to start growing from H2 2019, following commercial deployment in South Korea, and the soft launch of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in the Philippines. A majority of the developed countries in the region are expected to deploy 5G commercially in 2020, whereas developing countries are likely to launch 5G only after 2020, given the lack of available spectrum. Countries such as the Philippines and Thailand may be quicker in adopting 5G due to the efforts by local governments to expedite the process of spectrum allocation.

“Local government support will be critical for the success of 5G. Regulations need to cover new 5G use cases and should also be flexible enough to help drive the local economy in line with their respective digital nation initiatives,” noted Zukarnain.

Telecom operators and other 5G market participants should explore the opportunities in:

• Developing 5G infrastructure to deliver AI services.
• Establishing partnerships with mobile edge computing providers to support the deployment of latency-sensitive applications enabled by 5G.
• Offering scalable identity management, network slice security, and distributed authentication services to ensure a secure 5G network for customers.
• Collaborating with industries such as automotive, healthcare, and utilities to provide cross-industry connectivity.

5G in Asia-Pacific, Forecast to 2025, is part of Frost & Sullivan’s Information and Communication Technology Growth Partnership Service program, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future.

For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies. Best1tech, a Katalyst group company, offers cloud based solutions that are powered by AI and Machine learning algorithms giving higher growth to business enterprises.