Cellular carriers can help companies find their 5G
More and more cellular network operators around the globe are developing their Wireless WAN and 5G for business strategies. However, how do you convince organizations that 5G for business solutions should have a place in their network architecture?
Prepare customers for 5G now
While the reality of 5G for business is not far away, there are things you can do to prepare customers for robust 5G deployments.
Sell 4G and Gigabit-Class LTE solutions today — Often the first step of finding your 5G is to deploy a Wireless WAN solution with LTE Advanced or LTE Advanced Pro. Organizations can gracefully transition from 4G to 5G with confidence that their investment is protected and that the management platform is the same.
Sell 5G-optimized infrastructure today – Organizations that are at all considering wireless should select solutions today that will optimize their 5G experience for tomorrow. Selecting routers with high-speed interfaces, generous processing power, and 5G-specific software features are examples.
Just as important, operators can help organizations prepare a WAN network that can simultaneously support sites operating across every cellular generation and across every 5G spectrum — all within the same platform. This is critical for organizations that want to deploy the latest technology as it rolls out.
Roll out 5G for fixed wireless
The 5G capabilities rolling out first are more adapted to the fixed-wireless market, which is a vast market with multiple use cases. 5G for business has launched in Australia and is on its way to markets around the globe. Consider the following 5G fixed wireless use cases.
Primary Wireless – While deploying wireless as a primary link is not necessarily a fit for every site, primary wireless is a good fit for many sites. More than ever, organizations expand, shrink, divide, and move. Only wireless can provide the level of flexibility to meet the needs of a dynamic business.
Further, businesses with numerous locations crave single-provider relationships to cut down on management complexity and operational costs. Many organizations will jump at the chance to shed multiple providers for a single wireless provider choice across all of their markets.
Some sites may be in locations with poor options for wired broadband. Even if the site is not served by mid- or high-band 5G services, LTE Advanced, Advanced Pro, or low-band 5G can serve these sites well.
Bandwidth Augmentation — Wireless WAN provides a dual opportunity for organizations that are considering SD-WAN. First, they gain immediate extra bandwidth. A wireless link can steer peak traffic or be dedicated to a specific traffic type, thus offloading the central links.
Second, by using wireless as a supplemental traffic link, organizations have a built-in diverse pathway to direct traffic if the wired connection goes down. This becomes invaluable during a wired network outage.
Failover — Failover probably isn’t the first thing businesses think about when considering 5G. However, 5G opens up new opportunities to serve much larger sites. Instead of only failing over critical traffic in large sites, all traffic can continue to operate without interruption. The bottom line is that if your primary wired WAN link is faster, your failover needs to be faster.
Continue to evolve data plans
When considering Wireless WAN, one of the first questions asked by prospective customers is, "How predictable is wireless billing?" The good news is that operator data plans have started to evolve to fixed billing even with 4G offerings. Operators that move closer to a fully predictable billing model will have an early advantage for the 5G market.