5G is increasingly rolling out globally and opportunities it will throw up for the DCB and wider telemedia industry and beyond are increasingly becoming clear.
While we see the high-end, futurama-style offerings such as O2 and its driverless car research, across the rest of the telecoms industry, 5G offers a raft of new services that will soon wow consumers and business users worldwide.
And these new services will need to be paid for.
This is where 5G gets interesting. While SMEs are keen to use it, Three UK is very excited about its prospects and it is already being used in many places, the real interest lies in the fact that it is going to drive uptake and use of both RCS and carrier billing – not to mention a host of VAS services to boot.
RCS, the next generation of text, is going to get a real boost from 5G as it will be the ideal messaging medium across such powerful broadband networks. It can deliver rich and engaging experiences and will be the driver to connect people to even more rich and engaging online services, games, content and more.
And DCB sits nicely with RCS and 5G. It will be the key to monetising the services being extolled by RCS marketing and could well be the driver of whole new ways of consuming content and services.
5G is going to usher in such latency-free access to HD video content that it could well become the de facto way of watching video and OTT TV. That is going to be so ubiquitous that offering subscriptions to, say, sports matches is not going to be fit for purposes. Not everyone who wants to watch a one-off event like a final is going to want to buy a sub. This is where carrier billing comes into its own: a short, quick, easy way to pay for a one off view on the mobile of something that, thanks to 5G, will be great on a mobile.
Similarly, 5G is going to shake up VAS such as dating and chat, again adding in such richness – and video – that it totally changes the experience. This too will drive a raft of more casual users around the core subscribers. This is where the growth is and tapping into casual and immediate use is what DCB has always been about.
In short, 5G is going to bring about instant gratification and DCB has always been a means of monetising those instant gratification moments. For many stalwarts of telemedia this has meant certain, more grown-up content types, but the power of 5G is that it will make instant gratification something that can come from any kind of content or service – and that can be billed for.
With no latency, 5G is all about richness and carrier billing and other telemedia services are there to make that something that can be readily and easily monetised. The future looks bright
