GSMA Intelligence (GSMAi) urged operators to learn from early deployments of standalone (SA) 5G to tap a significant opportunity for the technology from the enterprise sector.

In a report, the analyst company noted SA 5G delivered more of the specific capabilities enterprises were likely to demand, including low-latency, high reliability and network slicing. Another key benefit is the technology doesn’t require blanket coverage to be effective.

The company noted operators were beginning to call for a change to the way network and service performance insights are shared to meet growing expectations regarding the depth of service-level agreements in the 5G era, particularly around latency and real-time bandwidth performance.

Peter Jarich, head of GSMAi, believes the solution is “performance reporting via an integration with enterprise processes”. While he noted few operators flagged this as a move likely in the near term, he warned “scaling enterprise services could be a challenge” without it.

GSMAi also highlighted a need for operators to understand enterprises’ requirements to tailor 5G capabilities to specific use cases.

“It’s clear that some operators are more mature in their enterprise business: they need to highlight this expertise. Where an operator is relatively new to the enterprise segment, they must lean heavily on their partners as part of any marketing campaign”, Jarich said.

Enterprises, in turn, should watch operator 5G trials to explore how they could use the next-generation technology, along with considering how they could integrate operators’ network and service performance data into their business systems.