INTERVIEW: Jan Geldmacher, president of Sprint Business (pictured), argued headline-grabbing consumer 5G services have obscured the potential benefits the technology offers enterprises, making education a key element in the operator’s future plans.

Speaking during MWC19 Los Angeles, the executive noted while many of the operator’s customers are aware of 5G, there is work to do in terms of communicating the real benefits it offers to business users beyond the higher speeds associated with consumer services.

The lower latency of 5G, for example, “opens up very many new opportunities for new disruptive business models”.

He cited the potential to employ the low-latency to effectively make robots intelligent by enabling swift communication with a cloud-based AI “brain” as one possible application.

“Now all of a sudden you overcome the problem of the robot not being intelligent because you can connect them in real time”, which opens “new opportunities to work between robots and humans”.

Once the operator communicates the benefits to businesses “you see a great engagement and excitement”, he said.

During the interview, Geldmacher noted consumer 5G services are a great driver of deployments, helping the operator to swiftly meet its initial coverage goals, and provided an update on Sprint’s IoT testbeds.

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