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In response to the UK’s approach to 5G development, Nathan Howe, vice president of emerging technology at Zscaler, comments:

“Technology is ever evolving, 5G and its supporting network changes will bring the largest shifts to technology consumption since the inception of the Internet as a “public solution”. What is being implemented with 5G, will be the technological architecture to support multiple versions of “new generations” of phone solutions. Moving from traditional monolithic systems of the “old world of mobile connectivity” to the open, dynamic, dispersed, and interconnected solutions for 5G will empower all future mobile technological solutions.

“5G, and beyond, will need more efficient and effective radio signal management. Not only as which frequency can be used, but who can use it. The Citizens Broadband Radios Service (CBRS) in the USA has already allowed for uptake of private 5G solutions, where individuals are able to run their own private 5G without carrier dependencies. Proposals such as Future RAN Competition (FRANC) will give the UK an opportunity to build similar supporting services for UK organisations.

“It is important that the development of 5G platforms follow the goals of OpenRAN - ultimately enabling any organisation of even single developers to build and integrate solutions. Whilst there may be political implications to this, the goal of all involved should be to provide secure connectivity, from User Equipment all the way through the Multi-Access-Edge-Compute, Core and on to the Internet, or other solutions. How this security is implemented needs to be actively considered regardless of the telco infrastructure.”