A lot of money has been spent on building a plethora of testbeds, trials and ecosystems; money has been given to academia as well as to public sector bodies and public/private consortiums in the hope of stimulating the take up and deployment of 5G, the UK Government assigned £200 million for investment ii trials and testbeds, but has it been successful? There are not many live production deployments supporting sustainable business models, why is this? What has been the main problem to overcome – is it technical, commercial, operational or a combination of all three? Is the 5G story more complicated than “just another G”, does it require a new model for funding, building and operating communications networks and the ecosystems that surround them?
The question of “what does good look like?” still appears to be unanswered, so what is it that actually needs to be done to produce sustainable 5G business models and the regional and national ecosystems we are told are essential for 5G to be a success? We will explore how the S5GC are approaching the question of how to make 5G a nationwide success and the elements needed for a successful 5G ecosystem to flourish.