Operators questioning the business case for 5G should be viewed as a positive sign as it means they have faith the technology is on track for a 2019 launch, Qualcomm senior director Ben Timmons (pictured) argued.

Speaking at a media briefing in London, Timmons said the company was encouraged by recent statements made by BT CEO Gavin Patterson and Vodafone Group CTO Johan Wibergh warning many operators still had not created coherent business cases for 5G.

He added potential efficiency gains offered by 5G, and the ability to meet ever increasing demand for data, meant an easy argument could be made to operators’ shareholders for investing in the new technology – even if just considering its potential for consumer mobile.

Though, he noted, there were far more use cases and business opportunities further down the line.

Citing comments made during Huawei’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum in mid-November, Timmons noted “a lot of senior people” discussed 5G: “We had the CTO of Vodafone and CEO of BT and lots of commentary [asking] where’s the business case? To me those things are a good sign because that means the technology is on track.”

“This is the point where operators recognise the genuine chance to deploy these technologies so they need to start thinking of investors and the business case. But the underlying demand is so clearly there.”

Advancing towards 5G
At the event, Qualcomm highlighted the importance of developments made in developing and testing gigabit LTE networks over the last 12 months, with 38 operators across 23 countries now either testing, using, or preparing the technology.

“As well as being important in its own right, gigabit LTE is a key foundation for 5G. Because of the nature of 5G, a lot of the promises are going to be underpinned by quality of the LTE-Advanced network,” Timmons explained.

The chip company was heavily involved in many of these trials and pointed towards successful tests in Europe in partnership with Megafon in Moscow, EE in London, and Milan with Telecom Italia.

Timmons added Qualcomm had also made significant strides towards 5G testing in recent weeks. He pointed specifically to a trial announced earlier in November with ZTE and China Mobile, which the company said was the world’s first end-to-end test using what it believes will be the final 5G New Radio (NR) standards.

The 3GPP is set to unveil non-standalone 5G NR standards in December.