Nearly two years ago, the COVID-19 outbreak first struck the world. Within one past year, the world has grappled to find new equilibrium to effectively fend off other pandemic waves, including the latest Omicron variant.
The pandemic did not prevent telecom industry stakeholders from creating breakthroughs to ensure that people and society everywhere benefit from the digital transformative potential of ICTs. Even more, it spurs Indonesia 5G adoption to reach a new cusp with the 5G commercial rollouts in 2021 by Telkomsel, Indosat Ooredoo and XL Axiata.
It is just a matter of time, Indonesia will witness coverage, connectivity and speeds are increasing as the 5G infrastructure and ecosystem develop, grow mature, and be ready to support large swaths of the economy, ranging from telecommunication, health, finance to manufacturing.
The advent of 5G deployment unlocks new digital capabilities thanks to an increased bandwidth, reliability and speeds available to power up businesses in order to fully harness the capabilities of advanced data-driven technologies such as IoT, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This goes well in sync with an estimate by HIS Markit that 5G might generate socioeconomic impact by $13.2 trillion of global economic value by 2035.
5G for businesses gain new momentum in post-pandemic scenario
Massive shift to digitalization requires telecom industry to democratize service in order to provide universal and affordable broadband connectivity for all, especially for businesses of all sizes—including small to medium-sized companies, who want to stay ahead of the curve.
Exploring and working to leverage the benefits of 5G to improve existing situations or create new opportunities is of paramount important. Survival is the rule of the game in new economic requirements of optimized efficiency, higher productivity and competitiveness. Businesses have to strive to remain relevant amidst soaring digital needs and demands across industries.
5G promises a wealth of opportunities for growth and innovation for businesses going forward. Combined with other frontier technologies like AI, IoT and the cloud, early adopter communities, not to mention endless possibilities of use cases.
The advantage of larger capacity and faster speeds of 5G that bring the lower latency benefits fuel a huge opportunity for organizations to develop new business models, products and services, as well as innovation for tomorrow. But not only can 5G give innovation a boost, it can help tech-savvy companies and entrepreneurs with the way they work—and the way they serve their customers.
Discussions are abound and intense here recently revolving around spectrum availability, ecosystem maturity and digital talents that obstruct the 5G deployment. But, over time, as technology and network keep unfolding, 5G is poised to give innovation a boost, help businesses to thrive with the way they work and serve customers, especially in the era of new normal.
We are all now looking forward to seeing in coming years for things to become really mainstream. The uptake in enterprise applications definitely hinges upon further rollout of 5G networks and adoption of more devices compatible with the infrastructure. Once deployed, the lightning-speed technologies will help industry optimize operations, detect malfunctions earlier and upgrade supply chains through smarter management.
G20 forum might create a new momentum for 5G for business development
This year, Indonesia is gearing up for the Group of 20 Nations (G20) presidency. The forum will cover more than 150 meetings – not counting the side events.
It is worth noting that President Joko Widodo has floated three strategic issues to tackle challenges posed by pandemic-plagued world: the digital technology-based economic transformation, the transition to renewable energy to achieve climate goals and the inclusive health management. The first two might directly correlate with the deployment of 5G networks in Indonesia.
On this backdrop, Indonesia’s 5G for business development might gain a fresh momentum, with how digital economy can contribute more toward a more inclusive and resilient economy through technology and digitalization. 5G for businesses clearly has untapped potential to drive digital economy to fulfill its top billing as a major engine of global economic growth.
To simply put, Indonesia’s 5G network, even though, is still in its infancy stage, has a golden opportunity to be showcased under the big world spotlight.
Likewise, far more significant is the 5G ‘enabling effect’. The G20 fora can be medium to explore ideas and use cases from across the globe on how 5G help industries hit climate goals. As suggested earlier by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) SMART 2020 report, the scale of the 5G enabling effect, across all ICT, will be equivalent to 15% of all global emissions by the end of 2020, thanks essentially to changes in processes and behavior across multiple industry verticals, powered up by a high-capacity, ubiquitous and low-latency 5G network.
Together with virtualization, edge computing, AI-enabled analytics and cloud, 5G can help industries to implement new processes as an integral part of an energy efficiency program, by supporting the most efficient and flexible allocation of resources. Definitely, green and low-carbon technologies have become new drivers for sustainable development. This combination of 5G-powered digital economy transformation coupled with green energy development presents our future world with incredible opportunities.
Slowly but surely, 5G2B to take a center stage
The advent of 5G is just over the horizon. It might be evolving a bit slower than we expected. As entire ecosystem is getting ready to keep up the momentum going for 5G network developments, the benefits and blessings of 5G to bring digital to every person, home and organization are also getting closer.
Businesses and enterprises looking to future-proof their systems and products are facing indispensable necessity to recognize the potential of 5G — its promising network upgrade to deliver fast, reliable transmissions that are set to revolutionize business mobility solutions to supercharge their businesses.