MWC24:运营商努力让5G获得回报

While 在世界移动通信大会上，人工智能是未来的热门话题, operators are exercised with today’s problem of recouping money from the millions of dollars poured into 5G networks.

人们一再呼吁加强监管, 更广泛的合作, 并承诺不会重蹈5G的覆辙, such as letting streamers like Netflix extract all the value from data carried over their networks, 当涉及到AI盈利时.

“5G is the fastest-growing mobile standard in history but there are big challenges ahead,马茨·格兰德说, 总干事, GSMA. “移动收入增长有所下降，但资本支出却在上升. We have to keep investing in new infrastructure to keep the world connected.”

As ever, the GSMA and the leaders of the world’s leading mobile operators make grand claims for the importance of their industry in serving both the world’s business community and solving societal problems, for instance, 通过弥合数字鸿沟.

运营商将花费1美元.5 trillion between now and 2033 on their networks and 90 percent of that will be on 5G, he said. “我们需要创新的商业模式来实现这一目标.”

One slice of potential revenue lies in getting more people to use mobile devices and mobile networks. Today over 4.6 billion people use the mobile internet—almost 60% of the world’s population. 2022年，新增2亿人开始使用移动互联网. There are 3.还有40亿人没有使用移动互联网, 这将为移动行业带来2300亿美元的收入. 但GSMA表示，进展的步伐正在放缓.

“We know the barriers such as affordability and concerns around security but this is frustrating in an increasingly digital world,” said Granryd. “(缩小差距)在道义上和商业上都是必须的。.”

GSMA正在大力推广 Open Gateway, an initiative to build a unified 5G ecosystem with a framework of open APIs so that businesses can build new services and businesses across national boundaries. A year from launch and it has 240 operators signed up representing over 65% of mobile connections, 和超过90个api.

Microsoft is a partner and came to MWC in force touting updates to its Azure platform for network operators. It describes this as “a carrier-grade, hybrid cloud platform, and the foundation of network modernization with AI.”

Microsoft EVP Jason Zander said, “We don’t want developers to have to write their app 50 times. They want to deploy it with 50 major operators across all continents at once.”

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith gave a keynote and said, “我们正在创造一个新的人工智能经济. 对我们来说，最根本的是伙伴关系. 我们不是垂直整合的. 我们没有面向消费者的应用商店. 我们不做薯片. 如果说现在是建立新伙伴关系的好时机，那就是此时此地.”

Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell made a similar pitch for telcos to tie networks with AI running on its data centers. “电信公司需要在下一波浪潮中成为赢家，”他说. “For network operators it is not just about productivity it is about growth. 发展这些关系是我们为你看到的机会.”

他补充说，电信公司拥有巨大的竞争优势. “绝大多数数据都是在边缘创建的. 云和应用程序正在向边缘移动. 人工智能也将处于边缘. 你想把人工智能带到你的数据中，而不是相反. Let’s move to a network that is software upgradable and a true platform for innovation. We understand transformation is hard, but the bigger risk is if you don’t do it.”

欧洲落后

5G rollout has been particularly sluggish in Europe where the European Union even warned in January that low 5G deployment risks delaying other technologies dependent on fast internet such as AI. 尽管5G已经覆盖了80%的欧盟人口, it is far below the 94% in Japan and the 98% in South Korea and the U.S. Around 40 million people in EU countries will still have no access to a fixed gigabit connection by 2030 according to the EU’s own figures, and will therefore fail to meet the block’s target of providing 5G to all households.

埃森哲首席执行官兼董事长朱莉娅•斯威特开始为电信客户服务. “Today regulation is not allowing us to do what we want across borders,” she said. “这也是一个行业问题. Individual operating units in different countries have deep cultures which make change challenging.”

Paolo Murri, 意大利电信公司TIM业务发展副总裁, said, “The hype before 5G was a mistake and as an operator we take our share of the blame. 我们太执着于我们的希望和愿望了, we didn’t do the math and we didn’t share the experiences beforehand with the vertical markets. 我们高估了需求. 我们原以为一切都会发生得更快.”

He indicated that the hype in the runup to 5G spectrum auctions had inflated the price. “在意大利，我们必须支付欧元2.40亿美元的频率可能是炒作所致.”

He quoted a report by Barclays banks stating that the return on 5G capital spend for telcos is running at 5.2%，资本支出成本为8%. “这是未来创新的问题，”穆里说.

这个行业才刚刚开始涉足 5G Standalone—networks that do not rely on 4G—there is hope that higher performance and lower latency will boost applications such as remote production of news and sports events.

关注体育

Operators are looking to the sports world as 5G promises new opportunities to personalize fan engagement.

“当你进行投资时, you don’t make it emotionally but without the emotion of the fans any investment will be questionable,布莱恩·巴赫纳说, 担任巴塞罗那足球俱乐部巴萨远景部总经理，以及美国和亚太地区总经理. 在为期两天的体育论坛上发表讲话，该论坛是MWC的一部分, he said, “粉丝是自己观看体验的作者. The player has new connected performance technology that allows them to create and share their own media.”

贾斯汀·卡斯蒂略，洛杉矶标枪咨询公司的创始人.A.与运动员和体育特许经营商合作. “传统的运动员代言已经改变了. 它不再是一张照片和一个微笑. The overall lifespan of fan engagement should be 7 years plus not just time in the stadia. 移动技术加强了艺人和粉丝之间的联系.

他引用了他的机构与新西兰一家公司所做的工作 Soul Machines to create avatars of leading sports personalities to engage in real time with fans wherever they are in the world.

“These hyper real digital avatars can democratize fandom by connecting with top-tier athletes. [Golfer] Jack Nicklaus may be 84 and lives in Florida but he can now communicate with fans across multiple languages on a one-to-one basis and have a legacy in perpetuity in the metaverse with fans.”