During Verizon’s third-quarter earnings call back on October 24, the company’s CEO, Hans Vestberg, was asked very directly by Oppenheimer analyst Tim Horan what he thinks needs to be done for the broader wireless industry to monetize all of its pricey 5G network investments.
Vestberg, who oversaw Verizon’s $45.5 billion commitment for new 5G spectrum at the FCC's 2021 license auction, responded with a 250-word answer that Allison Johnson, writing for The Verge, accurately described as ”a show of verbal gymnastics that meant precisely nothing.” (You can read Verizon's full Q3 earnings transcript to see what she's talking about.)
As Johnson effectively details, for all the billions of dollars they have collectively spent to hoist 5G over the past several years, wireless giants Verizon Communications, AT&T and T-Mobile do have some success stories.
Verizon and T-Mobile, or example, have captured 6% of the U.S. home broadband market, nearly 7 million customers, in just two years with 5G-enabled fixed wireless access services.
Still, the lofty use cases these companies proposed to sell investors initially on massive 5G investments — self-driving cars and remote surgery, for instance — still seem years away.
Not only do these ambitious technological endeavors require a standalone 5G network to pull off — a buildout that all three top wireless companies are still a long way away from completing — the ability to sell such applications into specialized verticals just isn't in these carriers’ DNA, at least not yet.
“If you’re going to sell 5G and edge computing services to a hospital, you need a sales organization that understands healthcare," RCR Wireless News editor-in-chief Sean Kinney explained to Johnson in an interview.
These sales agents need to know “exactly how hospitals run” and “what their problems are,” he added. “You need that for every vertical industry — for transportation, logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing and hospitality. And that’s just a hard thing to do.”
Again, you can read Johnson's full feature in The Verge here.
