5G Commercial services will start appearing in the Japanese market in 2019 in a very limited and basic form, and widespread deployments will not start in earnest until 2020 and beyond. We are starting to see from other countries, however, the kinds of services that enterprises will use on 5G networks and Japanese enterprises need to start considering these options and planning accordingly as the ultra-fast and low-latency benefits of a 5G network will add new capabilities towards achieving digital transformation.
5G Starts with Fixed-Wireless Access in the USA
The first commercial 5G service globally was started in the United States on October 1st 2018 in the cities of Sacramento, Houston, Indianapolis and Los Angeles from Verizon. The service is fixed-wireless, and claims to offer Internet connectivity of up to 1 Gbps with actual speeds averaging around 300 Mbps. The service costs US$50 (JPY 5,524) per month for Verizon subscribers and US$70 (JPY 7,734) per month and includes access to streaming services like Apple TV and YouTube TV. While this kind of service will not be the main use for 5G in Japan as FTTH is faster, cheaper and plentiful in most of Japan, it does give a glimpse of how 5G will have a large impact on the enterprise. 300 Mbps is considered to be a fast Internet connection speed in many parts of America where there are limited wireline options but 5G test networks in other markets such as China are already clocking 3 Gbps in a moving vehicle. Similar speeds will reach Japan in the next two years, at which time Japanese enterprises can really start to consider having a “wireless office”. Japanese enterprises will also have the opportunity to offer new services to their customers and improve internal processes using 5G. Both commercial and pre-commercial 5G enterprise services are starting to emerge outside of Japan which provide a preview of the types of services Japan will have in the 5G era.
