Will telcos achieve a decent return on their 5G investments?

• TelecomTV has just published its Industry Vision report based on feedback from our DSP Leaders Council members 
• We asked those senior telecom industry executives about a broad range of topics
• They are mostly, and perhaps remarkably, optimistic that 5G investments will ultimately deliver a decent return 

Has the mobile operator community spent unwisely on 5G? It’s one of the biggest questions in the telecom sector and a question that is, once again, being hotly debated as the noise around 6G gets louder and telcos shrink away from the thought of another generation of crushing capex. 

In general, 5G is regarded as something of a damp (and expensive) squib, with very few operators making happy noises in the wake of their massive 5G investments – Deutsche Telekom’s CEO Tim Höttges is the exception to this particular rule. 

So when we canvassed the members of TelecomTV’s DSP Leaders Council, via a survey in January, to get their views on a number of major industry topics, we asked: Will telcos ultimately achieve a decent return on their 5G investments?

The councillors were, it seems, still in seasonal high spirits when responding to the survey as a majority, 54%, responded in the affirmative, while only a quarter of them took a negative view on 5G return on investment, as the chart above shows. 

Could it be that our council optimists are hopeful that 5G standalone deployments and 5G-Advanced capabilities will open a floodgate of new revenue streams for the world’s mobile operators? Perhaps so but, of course, the telcos will need to stump up yet more capex cash to get those additional 5G systems integrated into their commercial networks. No doubt such capabilities will be up for discussion during the imminent MWC25 show in Barcelona. 

You can see how the DSP Leaders Council members voted on a range of topics in our recently published and free-to-download DSP Leaders Industry Vision Report. 

And with some important decisions about 6G specifications work looming, you can see what our council members thought about that particular topic by reading our recent article, Top telecom sector execs split over 6G – report.

You can find all of our free-to-download reports here and you can stay up to date with our coverage of mobile network developments in our dedicated 5G Evolution channel. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV