LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL MBB FORUM 2019, ZURICH: Loss of 5G service would have a far wider ramifications than outages of 4G, Telefonica CTIO Enrique Blanco warned, adding this puts the onus on the industry to ensure resilience is built into the core of next generation networks.

Speaking in the opening keynote, Blanco said when it came to designing standalone 5G core infrastructure, operators “cannot build networks as we did in the past, we have to guarantee the core will be done in the right way”.

He emphasised elements including being open, cloud native and working with multiple vendors as necessary to ensure 5G lives up to its promise and is able to support the critical use cases frequently cited for the technology.

“If we have a blackout today in 4G we would be suffering and our customers would be suffering,” Blanco said. “If in the future we stop a 5G network, we will be stopping society: we will be stopping the hospitals, cars and industry. We will be stopping more than a massive number of customers.”

He added the mobile industry must ensure this scenario was “just impossible”.