25th Feb 2019
Wireless providers will spend big to deploy 5G, but they also stand to gain new markets, revive pricing power and reap rewards that should excite global investors.
The promise of faster and more reliable connections has driven consumer anticipation for fifth-generation mobile networks, or 5G, but for wireless providers and investors, the technology could drive significantly more than a speed upgrade.
Indeed, 5G stands to revolutionize global mobile telecommunications. It will open an assortment of new use cases and markets, drive major changes in market structure and create a new paradigm for pricing. For telecoms in leading markets, such as China, the U.S., Korea and Japan, these themes will emerge as the main share-price drivers over the next decade—a good deal of which isn’t yet priced into valuations.
In a recent report from Morgan Stanley Research, a collection of the firm’s telecoms strategists move past the headlines and take a deep dive on the impact of 5G on telecoms and share prices. They estimate that the game-changing network could generate incremental annual revenue of $156 billion from seven 5G use cases over the next decade—40% of current mobile service revenue.
“Although 5G will take longer to reach maturity than previous cycles, the technology will emerge as the most important value driver for the wireless industry over the next decade. Here are some key issues for the industry.”