LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS SHANGHAI: The most significant impact of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) will be the way it transforms vertical industries, with IoT eliminating the many inefficencies that exist across industries, claimed Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri, who also reiterated the rationale behind its planned multi-billion dollar acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent.

During a fireside chat at this morning’s ‘Road to 5G’ keynote session, he stated: “We are a mobile broadband specialist as operators increasingly converge. Eight of the top ten operators are converged players. Only about 29 per cent of operators in the world are pure-play.”

The Alcatel-Lucent mega deal give would it fixed and IP router assets, which it doesn’t have today, and make it an end-to-end provider. “We’d get stronger in wireless and get very strong in North America. When you look at the deal, you rarely get this much complementary synergy.”

Suri said 5G access will help people save time and make life more convenient, but on the industry side “the impact will be more profound. Almost every industry will be technology driven”.

For example, 1.3 million people are killed in auto accidents every year, so the move to autonomous cars will happen by 2025. “This will reduce some of those inefficiences. And look at hospitals, data is very siloed,” he said.

The key challenges in moving to IoT, or what Nokia refers to as the programmable world, will be network security, privacy, standardisation as well as silos that make it difficult to penetrate other industries.

The industry is not as focused on security as it should be, he warned. “It’s not very expensive to find a loophole in the network and try to pass on mobile malware and target personal data.”

When targeting verticals, Suri said the question will be how to work with the network guys, the operators and the vertical industries.

Nokia is working on IoT connectivity platforms, but he said the money is not there. “The spend will be on the application and services. We have to move from providing IoT platforms and choose specific verticals to focus on.”

It has picked healthcare and automotive, the latter because of the strong presence in that market held by the Finnish vendor’s navigation firm HERE (although actually Nokia may yet sell the division).