5GPCs: Cellular Operators Key To Widespread Adoption

While smartphones are all the rage in 5G, the market trends are aligning for a quiet revolution of 5G-enabled laptops (5GPCs) and other non-smartphone computer devices. The world’s first 5GPC, Lenovo’s Yoga 5G, was introduced at CES 2020, kick-starting the process. Although always-connected, always-on laptops ( ACPCs) have been around for some time, their widespread adoption has been constrained mainly because of restrictive and expensive data pricing. The extremely high capacity and improved efficiency of 5G, which allows operators to offer attractive pricing combined with the remarkable improvement in the performance of ACPCs, has the potential to push the 5GPC market into high gear.

5G Offers The Best Network Technology For ACPCs

5G traction has been beyond anybody’s expectations. As of the end of 2019, 348 operators were investing in 5G and 61 operators had already commenced 5G services. The operators who have launched are steadily expanding their coverage. The introduction of dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) — which allows 5G to use the 4G spectrum, expected commercially in the second half of 2020 — will substantially improve coverage. Thanks to the diligent work of regulators around the world, 5G has over 10 times more spectrum than 4G in many cases. That includes all the bands: higher (e.g., millimeter wave), middle (e.g., 2.5 and 3.5 GHz) and lower (e.g., 600 MHz).

Although 5G’s super-high speeds get all the attention, the biggest advantage of 5G is its extreme capacity, thanks to all that spectrum. That means cellular operators have the opportunity, more than ever, to experiment with new pricing and data plans. We already see glimpses of that in the true unlimited data plans for smartphones and fixed wireless access ( FWA) services and plans. I strongly believe that 5GPCs will be a worthy addition to the new horizons operators will explore with 5G.

For the operators pouring billions of dollars into 5G network build-out, the sooner and the more users they get on that network, the better. The abundant capacity of the 5G network allows operators to move laptop users into a new usage paradigm: from today’s “data sipping, only turning on the cellular connection when needed, always conscious of hitting the data limit” mindset…