5G is less important now. What’s going wrong?
I read this week that 5G is now considered ‘less important’ for 41% of business executives in the wake of Covid-19. Just 5% think it’s much more important. While that isn’t a big surprise, I think it’s a glimpse of the challenges operators will face as they try and recover the gargantuan sums they are investing in 5G. Recent months have been about survival of the fittest. And while change is an accepted part of doing business, plans really have been turned upside down as the economy tanked, uncertainty dug in, and an ever changing set of rules came from the government. This kind of change means that today’s issues, (which could quite literally have become very different to yesterday’s and are likely to be different again to tomorrow’s), become the talking point at the boardroom table. The long-term plan gets shoved aside. It’s a really common behaviour at the moment. The ‘Covid effect’ boils down to obsessing on the here and now and not adjusting at the detriment of the long term strategic plans. Decisions are deferred, expenditure is questioned, cuts are made. But as history can tell us, fortune favours the brave. So, it’s no surprise then that...