Op-Ed: Deutsche Telekom still doesn’t ‘get’ 5G – and Germany is the big loser

  • Deutsche Telekom’s 5G consumer focus misses a bigger opportunity to turbocharge Germany's economy
  • 5G’s advanced features, like massive IoT and network slicing, are crucial for industry verticals
  • While competitors offer 5G for industry, DT's late rollout targets mobile gamers, which is super weird

The announcement by Deutsche Telekom Chief Exec, Tim Hottges, last week that the German incumbent has finally worked out how to make money from 5G garnered a lot of coverage, most of it positive. Tim finally gets it, was the consensus.

Does he though?

To me, it looks like Deutsche Telekom is still fixating on the consumer market and doesn’t understand the best business case for 5G, which in Germany’s case is clearly helping to digitalize its vast manufacturing and production capabilities.

Making the sausage

Getting 5G right isn’t just important for Deutsche Telekom – it will also determine Germany’s long-term economic viability.

Germany is Europe’s industrial powerhouse, but its industrial sector has been in decline since the end of World War II, with its contribution to the country’s GDP falling from 50% in the 1950’s to 30% in recent years.

If only there was a technology that had already been proven to provide transformative benefits in industrial applications, reversing this degeneration. Oh, wait…that would be 5G-SA (the SA stands for “Super Amazing,” maybe), installed alongside AI and automation – something other countries including China, Japan, Sweden and South Korea are already rushing to implement.

5G-FM

Deutsche Telekom says its 5G service covers 97% of the Deutschlander population with more than 80,000 antennas. So it can just offer enterprises and industries over that network, right?

Not so fast, gringo.

Until now, DT has only implemented 5G in Fake Mode (5G-FM). This is when carriers launch a” 5G service” over the last mile to pump up access speeds but still keep their existing 4G LTE core, ixnaying enterprises and industrial businesses from being able to use all of those juicy capabilities described in the back of the 10,400 pages of 5G specifications (the bit the DT execs didn’t get to).

They shoot, they miss!

Deutsche Telekom’s incumbent rivals in Germany have been offering real 5G for a while now. Vodafone Germany kicked off its 5G SA service back in April 2021. O2 Germany followed suit last year.

DT finally got around to rolling out its 5G SA service this month. But industrial titans can sit this one out. The carrier's strategy? Surprise! It's aimed squarely at consumers, not industry.

Specifically, it's for mobile gamers (a niche within a niche), who happen to own the Samsung Galaxy S24 (a niche of a niche of a niche) and absolutely must have low latency for their first-person shooters (real men don’t eat niche).

It’s true that DT has boosted its consumer market share by a smidge using its original non-SA 5G pseudo-service but compared to the massive potential of industrial automation it feels like the company – and the country – are still missing the point. 


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