5G roadblock: labor

Wed Jan 1 21:55:46 UTC 2020

On 31/Dec/19 02:55, Ca By wrote:

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> Vendors are not interested in reducing costs to network operators, in
> general. They may have replaced NPUs with x86 to reduce their own
> costs....

I was just talking to some friends about this today, over a beer and
some meat.

We suffer the same problem in the IP world... revenues fall, data
traffic explodes, margins decline; but capex costs remain the same, or
even escalate.

The ground is ripe for the young kids who can cobble together a mobile
core based on merchant silicon, white boxes and community-driven code.

If the vendors aren't going to follow what's happening with the
operators, they'll have to be taken out. We already see how much
Ericsson have downsized and re-focused. At some point, no one is going
to want to pay for data access on their mobile, but they'll still need
the connectivity to use their 2 favourite apps out of the 100's they
barely touch on their phone.

Garden-variety MNO operations have their days very numbered.

Mark.