LIVE FROM GLOBAL 5G EVENT, TOKYO: The success of 5G will depend on telecoms operators opening up to, and connecting with, a multitude of industry verticals to understand their businesses and help them develop new use cases and business models.

Building a collaborative relationship with verticals will be the differentiator for 5G, said Colin Willcock, chairman of the 5G Infrastructure Association and head of radio network standardisation at Nokia (pictured): “This will be the difference between 4G and 5G. For 5G to be successful it needs to integrate with verticals, and if we fail with the verticals, we will fail with 5G.”

He pointed to the fact the whole world is not telecoms. The reality is other industries have their own worlds, their own standards bodies and their own way of doing things, he said: “If we don’t understand and embrace this, we will not be successful with 5G.”

The big question, Willcock said, is how to bring these worlds together: “We need to embrace true collaboration, which means reaching out to bring in verticals, not just in the automotive world, but to the other verticals, like healthcare and media.”

Ce Zhao, a deputy director at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information, insisted integration with vertical industries will be vital for creating a new wave of applications.

Yves Bellego, director of network strategy at Orange and a 5G Infrastructure Association board member, noted it’s important to get vertical industries involved early because it takes years for them to learn what they can do with the technology and develop business cases.

He emphasised 5G milestones will be spread over years if not decades.

With the decoupling between traffic and revenue, Park Jong-han, 5G core architect for SK Telecom’s 5G Tech Lab, said the operator is pushing to find partners from other industries to create additional business opportunities.