It’s early days, but data out of Korea shows that 5G adopters are already consuming double the amount of data than they did in the 4G world, with VR, AR and sports the video entertainment heroes of the moment. The big question: What other value can content creators add?

Common thinking is that we have zero idea yet what the benefits of 5G will be for the video/content entertainment industry. Lurking on the edges of the unknown is a mix of doubt that there will be any benefit at all for regular TV/streaming video and deep fear of missing out on a transformative technology.

Video entertainment as we know it today is not a priority in justifying the massive costs of 5G. Tech people tell us that 5G networks are way too expensive to build merely to deliver more of the same entertainment that’s going out now... just faster. The feeling is that, if video delivery is all you’re thinking about, 4G is just fine.

Zoom out to the big picture. 5G is an integral part of smart-city/country ambitions, delivering the future built around the Internet of Things (IoT). You know, that life where cars are driverless and when your fridge knows you’re running out milk before you do and tells Amazon, which delivers it to your door as you get home. Or the wearables that promise everything from saving lives to extending attention spans. Or the AI waiters...

We have no doubt that video will be a part of the 5G future, and hopefully it won’t be confined to instructional videos that tell you how to connect and activate all the pieces of your digital support system.

Korea already has a taste of the crazy-fat pipe promise of 5G. In June 2018, the country was the first in the world to assign 5G spectrum; three mobile telcos – KT, SKT and LGU+ – paid a combined KRW3.6 trillion/ US$3.3 billion for spectrum. In April 2019, Korea turned on commercial mobile 5G services with 5G smartphones in urban areas, offering, among other services, “immersive media” and cloud/VR games, and eyeing nationwide coverage in the next two to three years. By the end of June, 1.65 million people had signed up. According to GSMA Intelligence, other markets that have already deployed 5G (like the U.S., the U.K. and Australia) have been left eating Korea’s dust.

Making the telcos incredibly happy, Korea’s 5G users have ramped up their data consumption in a major way, doubling the data they used on 4G networks to more than 18GB a month.

Samsung says one of the drivers of the stellar take up has been “a large amount of content and value-added services”, bundled to attract early adopters. “Most of these new services relate to video, games and social applications in new formats, especially VR and AR,” Samsung said in a 5G case study. Samsung’s white paper quotes LGU+ as saying that new services featuring AR and VR functions account for 20% of 5G traffic, compared with 5% for 4G. As a result, LGU+ plans to double its AR content by end 2019, with the focus on K-pop dance, training and sports.
Baseball games have been another driver in Korea. Telcos are offering everything from panoramic views of the stadium in ultra-high definition, allowing users to expand whatever area of the field they want to without quality degradation. Another function is motion tracking, which gives users unprecedented access to the sports action.

So that’s Korea, way ahead with its fast and furious push into the future. China is not far behind, fast-tracking its 5G consumer debut as Huawei’s battle to command a share of the global 5G network market rages. In November, state-owned telcos – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – rolled out commercial services in about 50 cities.

Using Huawei technology, the Philippines’ Globe Telecom was the first Southeast Asian country to roll out 5G services, going live with a commercial fixed wireless service in mid-2019.

Japan is almost there. Earlier this year, four Japanese telcos – NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Softbank and Rakuten – committed to investing almost US$15 billion in 5G networks by 2024. NTT DoCoMo, which has made a US$7-billion investment promise, has been testing 5G services since September and plans to launch commercial services across Japan in mid-2020. The three others also plan to have services up and running in 2020.

Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia have also planned great leaps forward in 2020. Hong Kong has already awarded 5G spectrum to four operators – China Mobile HK, HKT, SmarTone, and Hutchison. Taiwan, with heavy government backing, starts rolling out commercial services in 2020. Singapore will have two nationwide 5G networks and possibly two smaller networks; the government, eschewing an auction, has asked Singapore’s four telcos – Singtel, StarHub, M1, TPG Telecom – to submit their proposals by 21 January 2020. The full-coverage target is the end of 2022. Thailand opens its 5G spectrum auction in Feb 2020. Meanwhile, in India, an argument is raging over what telcos say are the government’s outrageous spectrum demands. Indonesia would love and will get 5G eventually, but discussions haven’t yet translated into a timetable.

2020 is clearly going to be an interesting year. The unknown is what the video entertainment industry will come up with to add value. As AP Towers CEO, David Goldstein, says: “If 5G going to be successful, we have to build the environment into which new people can come and do amazing stuff we never dreamed of. If that doesn’t happen, 5G won’t mean anything.”

Published in ContentAsia's Issue Seven 2019, 29 November 2019