Last week at the 2024 Mobile World Congress, it has been a week of walks and conversations.  At the event, executives of ETSI and 3GPP have discussed standards with more than twenty member companies at the core of mobile.

The GSMA extended invitations to ETSI, the 3GPP Market Partners TCCA (Critical Communications), the Alliance for Private Networks (formerly MFA), 5G-ACIA (Connected Industry), and 5GAA (Automotive) to participate in a Global 5G Alliance summit at MWC24 on Thursday, February 29.

The summit was specifically designed for industry representatives from Asia Pacific.

The speakers observed that despite the fact that 5G is nearing maturity, enthusiasm for it and the innovations it introduces remain relatively high in the APAC region. The session was informed of the expanding use of 5G systems in vertical markets throughout Asia. Sectors such as manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and mining are at the forefront of this movement, as the enterprise market propels private networks to phenomenal growth.

This was affirmed by Christina Patsioura of the GSMA, who noted that operators are crucial to facilitating the transition from 4G to next-generation networks, as consumers increasingly seek services beyond connectivity. She stated that 64 percent of businesses (worldwide) utilize or are evaluating private networks.

GSMA Intelligence private wireless networks are a resource.

For many of the 30 thousand use cases for Private networks (Source: GTI) the move to NPNs is hugely security related, as many of the business critical processes will be carried across them. The speaker from Mahindra of India identified monitoring & analytics, virtual assistance & simulation and Operational automation as the three 'sets of use cases' for the majority of those 30k identified. A theme of the discussion was on the need for common sets of functionality to be re-used across different (but similar) applications.

Takehiro Nakamura, NTT Docomo, representing 5G-ACIA, noted that there is still a lack of knowledge about 5G amongst some industry executives, he said “We need to explain what real 5G can do. Some people still have the hope that 5G will deliver everything to them. We need to explain the solutions and potential issues to be faced. This will improve the relationships between 5G technologists and users.” Nakamura-san continued: “There are many challenges in the language used and in the difference in processes. In 3GPP we start the discussion with a ‘requirements’ phase. However, in many industry discussions when we ask for requirements the end user asks instead what are your ‘assets’ that we can use? We need to be clear on the benefits of 5G, with real data and test results.”

Luis Jose Romero, the ETSI DG, highlighted the International aspect of cooperation as a major factor for the success of 5G Advanced and the need to build systems across all geographies, without fragmentation. He highlighted the role of Market Partners in 3GPP in making sure this happens. “What is most important is the exchange of requirements and then to bring them into 3GPP. The same is true for spectrum, the better the harmonization in these areas, the better for everyone.”