T-Mobile Tries to Jumpstart 5G Applications, Again
Why do you want 5G? The answer right now, if any, is pretty boring. It's probably either around overcoming congestion or getting better home internet.
Today T-Mobile is announcing its latest attempt to jumpstart new 5G applications, a project called "5G Forward" combining a developer platform, a physical innovation-center building, and partnerships with Qualcomm, Disney, and Red Bull.
To be honest, it's really hard for me to get excited about it. I've seen way too many incubators and attempts over the years: A 5G hackathon in 2017, Verizon's startups lab in 2018, a T-Mobile accelerator announcement in 2019, and more. T-Mobile's 5G accelerator site has a video from 2021 on it.
None of these efforts seem to have resulted in any deployed consumer or industrial applications for 5G. We do not now have widespread 5G game streaming, or remote infant care, or artificially intelligent 8K surveillance cameras. (That last one is probably good.) So it's worth asking why T-Mobile is hurling itself at this wall again, now.
For one thing, there are actual networks now. T-Mobile President of Technology Neville Ray said 40% of T-Mobile users have 5G devices and almost 50% of the total traffic on its network is 5G.
"We're at this point now where [with] the breadth and capability of the network, you now have an ability and a network there to commercialize this stuff," Ray said. "Folks are really starting to enjoy and leverage the 5G network that we built, and we need a much stronger push in innovation in the 5G space."
The Achilles heel there is that a lot of these 5G customers are having basically 4G experiences. They aren't getting the benefits of 5G-only features like quality-of-service, network slicing, and edge compute, which have
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