The industry has made ambitious promises about 5G, and many are beginning to ask whether those promises can actually be met.
Chris Nicoll, Principal Analyst at ACG Research, raised this question during a session at MWC Barcelona that included speakers from Nokia, Samsung, Evolved Intelligence, and the 5GIC.
Nicoll, who has written extensively on 5G, describes himself not as a skeptic but as a realist. He opened the session with a slide illustrating the many areas 5G is expected to affect, from consumer broadband to critical services.
Some use cases—such as autonomous driving and medical applications—will demand extremely high reliability and ultra-low latency from 5G, because lives could depend on it.
While many observers expect the U.S. and China to lead 5G deployment given their resources and talent pools, significant breakthroughs are emerging in less-expected regions.
“LTE arrived in developed countries first—big, fast, and heavy,” Nicoll said. “5G has the potential for a much broader geographic spread.”
Nicoll also showed a slide summarizing the fastest data speeds reported in 5G trials worldwide. The highest claimed speeds came from Middle Eastern operators such as Etisalat and Zain (70+ Gb/s), followed by Proximus in Belgium and Telenor in Norway at around 70 Gb/s.
“The U.S. and China are expected to be front-runners in 5G… yet they don’t appear on this particular slide,” Nicoll observed. “Nobody is talking about the Middle East as the engine of 5G, but Turkey has declared ambitions to be a leader too.”
Dan Warren, Head of Research at Samsung, expressed confidence that the industry can deliver many of 5G’s technical promises.
“I can build a high-speed, ultra-reliable, full-coverage network today—you might not like the bill, but it’s possible,” Warren said. “The gap lies between the promises made around 5G and the broader ecosystem required to deliver the use cases.”
Warren reviewed common 5G promises and noted how they align with ITU evaluation categories such as IMT-Advanced (delivered by LTE) and IMT-2020 (the upcoming standard). He pointed out that some goals, like 99% availability and ubiquitous coverage, are not primarily technical problems but deployment challenges: widespread small-cell rollouts and infrastructure in places networks don’t currently reach.
“These outcomes depend on how networks are deployed, not just the underlying technology,” Warren said. “The question of whether we can deliver hinges on motivation, investment, and the implications of meeting those targets.”
Warren also highlighted the automotive sector as an example of industry organizing around 5G, citing groups such as the 5G Automotive Association. Yet he emphasized the complexity involved. He described a scenario where a car connected to Vodafone uses vehicle-to-network (V2N) links to reach a traffic light owned by a different operator—creating chains such as V2N2N2X and, in more complex cases, V2N2multiN2X. Such scenarios quickly multiply when multiple operators and service types are involved.
“That requires a new interconnect architecture, a new roaming model, and presents massive commercial challenges,” Warren concluded.
Stephen Buck, CEO of Evolved Intelligence, raised concerns about security, noting that each generation of mobile technology has introduced new vulnerabilities—and 5G could repeat or amplify that trend if security is not built in from the start.
Buck and his team have identified weaknesses in the first release of 5G that could leave networks exposed to intrusion and that would be difficult to retrofit later. Legacy issues—such as the potential for tracking and call interception—could be multiplied in new environments if not properly addressed.
“One thing that’s worsened over successive generations is signaling security,” Buck said. “4G’s signaling security was weaker than 3G’s, and 5G currently risks becoming worse unless we act.”
Given 5G’s potential to enable life-critical applications like remote surgery, ensuring robust security is essential. Buck discussed 5G’s service-based architecture, which exposes network functions via APIs to enable richer, more seamless services. While this openness can enable beneficial use cases—such as a bank verifying a user’s location to reduce false fraud alerts—it also creates attack surfaces if interfaces lack proper authentication and authorization.
“APIs and exposed network functions can be used for good, but they can also be misused,” Buck warned. “Without defined security for those interfaces, unauthorized parties could register for services they shouldn’t access.”
The 3GPP is working on security elements for 5G such as SEPP, but Buck stressed that these protections must be implemented fully in upcoming releases to prevent known threats from resurfacing.
Henri Tervonen, CTO of Nokia, argued that AI will be essential to operate and optimize increasingly complex 5G networks.
“AI needs to be integrated across the network—at the radio, baseband, edge cloud, and central cloud—so the network understands what is actually happening,” Tervonen said. “5G introduces a wide range of traffic profiles—fast flows, slow flows, real-time low-latency services, and massive device connections—that require an intelligent approach to scheduling and resource allocation.”
He emphasized that the network must also provide substantial compute capacity. Real-time decisions—such as flow scheduling, beamforming, and user prioritization—must be made much faster in networks that are orders of magnitude more complex than before. Machine learning and AI capabilities are the only realistic way to achieve that level of automation and responsiveness.
Stuart Revell, Managing Director of RTACS Ltd and collaborator with the 5GIC at the University of Surrey, said he believes the industry can deliver on 5G’s promises but that substantial challenges remain.
Revell highlighted the 5GUK testbeds at King’s College London and the universities of Surrey and Bristol, explaining that they form three interconnected testbeds providing full end-to-end functionality—from user equipment to NR to core—interoperable across network boundaries.
“5GUK is effectively a network of networks,” Revell said. “Remember that for 5G to become a reality, no single network can deliver all aspects of the vision by itself.”
Referencing Warren’s example of the complex interactions needed for connected vehicles, Revell suggested reducing transactional complexity through higher-layer innovations such as data marketplaces that align with IoT principles.
“What I’m calling for is more innovation above the technology layer to empower 5G,” Revell explained. “We can meet the promises, but success will require far greater collaboration across industries, vendors, and operators.”
Do you think 5G will be able to deliver on its promises? Share your thoughts in the comments.