The race for Indigenous 5G

As the US heads for elections and US-China tensions increase, a big implication looms large for traditional network infrastructure vendors.

The trend was expected to benefit Nokia and Ericsson and to be fair they have seen more PoCs in the last few quarters for 5G.

Ericsson just announced their latest earnings on 21st October and disclosed 112 5G Agreements and 65 live Networks. (3)

But on the other hand we have governments and big operators who understandably want more control of their technology Roadmap and not be married to regulatory/Political tussles in the future .

Japanese telcos have announced some partnerships with local Japanese vendors for made in Japan initiatives.( 2)

This could be a big boost for the local vendors who seemed to have missed the boat for 3G/4G .

Jio also announced a partnership with Qualcomm for Made in India 5G technology .

We already are seeing Alliances like OpenRan /TIP etc which are democratizing the traditional Core/Network later and forcing the vendors to open up the APIs for an Open interface.

Overall this would be healthy for the operators as most operators try to control the Capex and streamline the Opex . So these measures give them better control and visibility .

This may mean a bit more introspection from the vendors as to how their revenue streams may start getting affected , maybe not in the short term but definitely in the medium to long term ( 3- 5 years + ).

Source

1. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/5G-networks/NTT-and-NEC-eye-made-in-Japan-5G-as-US-China-tensions-grow
2. https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/reliance-jio-qualcomm-successfully-test-5g-network-in-india-5989211.html
3. https://www.ericsson.com/assets/local/investors/documents/financial-reports-and-filings/interim-reports-archive/2020/9month20-ceo-slides.pdf