West Byfleet, U.K. – July 2, 2019 – A new study from Cradlepoint, the global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G Ready wireless network edge solutions, reveals that businesses expect 5G to be a major part of their technology roadmap but have a long way to go before they are ready to implement a solution.
The study, carried out at the recent 5G World Summit in London*, reveals that 78% of organisations think 5G and Gigabit-Class LTE may impact or already has made an impact on their technology roadmap in the next 1-2 years. However, only a fifth (21%) say they are fully prepared for adoption and nearly half (46%) revealed they have made only minor or no preparations at all to implement 5G.
The challenge of implementing high performance wireless technology may also be magnified by a limited understanding of the key differences between LTE/Gigabit-Class LTE and 5G. Most respondents (79%) report they have limited or no understanding of how the technologies differ. Similarly, 82% said they did not understand how Gigabit LTE applies to their organisation.
Security concerns may also limit speed of 5G adoption
Nearly three quarters of respondents (73%) also stated that concerns around security have the potential to limit how quickly their organisation adopts 5G. But with almost the same number of respondents predicting that security concerns will not impact 5G adoption (9%) as those who think it already has (8%), there appears to be no uniformity on the issue.
“Businesses need to define their pathway to 5G as a matter of urgency, but many are unsure where to begin,” explained Jason Wells, Vice President and General Manager EMEA at Cradlepoint. “Gigabit-Class LTE, for example, is a mature, higher performance expansion of the 4G LTE network offering theoretical download speeds of at least 1 Gbps. It’s a wireless option that businesses should be considering now – it can be enhanced gradually as business move down the pathway to full 5G connectivity.”
“Without sufficient planning and engagement with these ‘pathway’ technologies, businesses may find their ability to adopt 5G is delayed, and they could lose ground on 5G-ready competitors as a result,” concludes Wells.
ENDS
*About the survey
Cradlepoint surveyed 200 telecoms professionals in June 2019 at the 5G World Summit 2019, the only global event defining the future of 5G.
About Cradlepoint
Cradlepoint is the global leader in cloud-delivered wireless edge solutions for branch, mobile, and IoT networks. Cradlepoint’s Elastic Edge vision — powered by NetCloud services — provides a blueprint for agile, pervasive and software-driven wireless WANs that leverage 4G and 5G services to connect people, places and things everywhere with reliability, security, and control. More than 25,000 enterprise and government organisations around the world, including 75 per cent of the world’s top retailers, 50 per cent of the Fortune 100, and first responders in 10 of the largest U.S. cities, rely on Cradlepoint to keep critical branches, points of commerce, field forces, vehicles, and IoT devices always connected and protected. Major service providers use Cradlepoint wireless solutions as the foundation for innovative managed network services. Founded in 2006, Cradlepoint is a privately held company headquartered in Boise, Idaho, with a development centre in Silicon Valley and international offices across EMEA and Australia.
