We assessed the costs and benefits of new use cases via deployment of full-5G network capabilities in Europe

The problem

• Our clients, two leading 5G vendors, wished to understand the costs and benefits underlying potential full-5G use cases relevant to a European market, as well as the potential for European policy to shape future full-5G deployment
• The vendors appointed Analysys Mason to conduct a study on full-5G use cases and provide a cost–benefit analysis to inform future development of European 5G goals

The solution

• To begin, we considered the status of 5G deployment in Europe, encompassing several factors including population coverage, spectrum allocation and the status of evolution towards standalone 5G architectures
  • we developed a view on 5G as a flexible ‘open innovation platform’ supporting cross-sector use cases and environments, which we grouped into clusters of services
• To calculate the economic benefit, we built a model that estimates both the network costs and economic benefits of many of the use cases in each cluster
  • the costs and benefits associated with the new use cases were calculated with reference to the 5G mobile broadband (MBB) networks assumed to be deployed across Europe in 2025
• As a result of our economic analysis, we were able to identify key focus areas for future European 5G policy

Figure: Overview of the 5G ‘open innovation’ landscape considered in the study

The result

• Our clients were provided with a rich understanding of potential future 5G use cases as well as their individual economic costs and benefits, and the results of the study were shared at various spectrum conferences in Europe and globally