Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (00:05):
Hi, I am Tony Poulos, and today I have with me Kalvin Bahia, who is the Senior Director of Economics at the GSMA intelligence. Kalvin is responsible for delivering economic analysis on a range of topics including spectrum policy, regulation and competition. And he's previously worked at ocom and the UK Competition Commission. Welcome Kalvin. The GSMA has launched the 5G connectivity index. What is GSMA's purpose in publishing the index and what do you think the 5G index means for the industry?

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (00:38):
Thank you very much, Tony. Absolute pleasure to be with you today. Very good question to start off with, so just to provide a little bit of context, at the end of 2023, there are over one and a half billion 5G connections worldwide, which given that it launched in 2019, makes it the fastest growing mobile technology to date. We've seen a lot of policy makers, governments, as well as industry players doing their best efforts to launch and drive 5G forward. So the motivation and objective behind this index is to provide policy makers, governments, and also the mobile industry and wider ecosystem with a tool to track 5G development in each of their respective markets. We felt that an index was necessary because there's lots of different aspects to 5G. We can think of it in terms of 5G coverage, the use of 5G services, how affordability is, how good the consumer experience is. So bringing all of those together is what our objective was in designing and building this 5G index.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (01:44):
And what can policy makers and regulators find out from the 5G index?

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (01:49):
Hopefully the way in which they can use this index is to track 5G development in their respective countries. So I'd highlight two things in particular. One, they can see how 5G is developing and performing in their markets compared to other countries, whether it's neighboring countries or others in their region. And also I'd say more importantly, because we've encompassed so many different elements of 5G, they can use the index to focus on the things that require particular investment or policy focus. So to take an example, it could be that 5G coverage in a country is very high, but maybe the adoption of 5G is limited or maybe the use of consumer 5G is quite high, but something like 5G FWA services are more limited. So the index can not only allow policymakers to track 5G development, but it can allow them to really focus in on where the bottlenecks are, where the areas that they really need to improve on.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (02:50):
And what were the key findings that came out during GSMA 5G index study?

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (02:55):
Well, obviously there's many insights and so I would encourage any viewers to visit the 5G Index website, but I would call out a few in particular. So first of all, we see across all countries where 5G has been deployed, it's developing a much better consumer experience than previous generations. If you look at the countries that are in the index in many countries, 5G is delivering 5G is developing speeds that are more than 10 times faster than 4G often due to the assignment of new spectrum bans. We are also seeing 5G becoming more affordable, both for the 5G data plans and devices, which is really important if we're going to achieve the objective of making 5G accessible for everyone. So for example, if you look at emerging countries, the majority of 5G devices being sold are less than $250. So that's very important as well. Another particular finding from the 5G index is that 5G fixed wireless access, FWA services is a growing and important use case.

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (04:09):
There are a number of countries where we've seen significant adoption in, for example, Australia, Germany, Q eight, and the us, and that's going to be very important in terms of providing high speed fixed services to those that are underserved by other fixed services like fiber and cable. So those are what I would characterize as the positive developments from 5G Index. I would however flagged that if you look at the 5G index performance across countries, there's room for improvement pretty much across the board. The index scores are marked out of a hundred, and the highest scoring country is Q eight, which is 68. Most of the countries are scoring less than 50. And so in every country there are at least three, four areas to improve.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (05:00):
And how do you best unleash the full benefits of 5G?

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (05:03):
We've obviously got the points that I mentioned before. So 5G is enabling better consumer experience, faster services, it's becoming more affordable. We're seeing some particularly with 5G FWA, some new use cases. But the reason why we find that pretty much all countries still have room to improve is that 5G is an evolution and we're very much in the first stages of that evolutionary process. So to give a few examples, a lot of the potential 5G use cases that could drive more usage. For example, on the consumer side, AR and VR use cases, they're still very nascent and still in their early stages of development Going forward, if we see those use cases expanding, then we'll see some changes in the 5G index. The other areas I would highlight in particular are if you look at one of the key expected use cases of 5G, it's really expected to transform the business to business segments.

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (06:10):
So using 5G to transform connectivity amongst businesses. We've seen some early examples of that, China being a notable example, but in many countries that B2B segment is also still quite limited. So driving that going forward is going to be an area where many countries can improve and link to that. If we think about how to maximize the benefits of 5G, I'd highlight two parts in particular. So one is 5G standalone, which is required to really realize the full benefits of 5G in many countries or specifically in 17 countries. In the 5G index, no operators have launched 5G standalone. So that's going to be important going forward. And the other part I'd highlight is 5G advanced or what some call five point 5g. This is also going to enable some of the faster and more enhanced use cases that I've mentioned before, for example, on the B2B segment. And as those things are deployed in the coming years, I think we should definitely see some improved performance across the board in the 5G index.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (07:17):
I mentioned earlier about policy makers and regulators, but what are the recommendations that have come out from the index specifically for them?

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (07:27):
Yeah, so I think if we think of the things that are required to achieve the things that I mentioned before, so driving forward and deploying 5G standalone, deploying 5G advanced services, delivering some of these newer use cases for consumers and businesses, these all require a number of things in common. So one is, for example, device support within the broader ecosystem, but one requires an increased and enhanced investment. Another aspect for operators is to try and achieve more monetization of 5G services. But what really underpins all of this is an enabling a policy and regulatory framework. And what we mean by that is, well, it encompasses several things, but it includes things like, for example, enabling small cell deployment, streamlining back call, ensuring that operators have access to sufficient and affordable spectrum given the increased data requirements, and also having a competition framework that drives dynamic competition and benefits to consumers. So all of those things need to be brought together if we're to realize the full benefits of the new 5G use cases.

Tony Poulos, TelecomTV (08:48):
Kalvin, thank you so much for giving us more insight on another great GSMA initiative. Thank you.

Kalvin Bahia, GSMAi (08:56):
Thank you very much, Tony, pleasure speaking with you.