HFS Highlight: Capgemini seeks to shape a cross-industry 5G ecosystem

The Telecom, Media, and Technology (TMT) industry is a springboard: its innovation gives us new technologies, platforms, and combined solutions that proliferate throughout industries beyond TMT. This was one of the key findings in our recent TMT Service Providers Top 10 2021 report—and 5G (often with associated technologies like the internet of things [IOT], edge computing, and much more) is a prime example of this. In some respects, 5G can be treated as an industry of its own and a sub-segment of the telecom industry. It is also a change agent: 5G is enabling new customer experiences and business models—and successful TMT enterprises and service providers are monetizing this throughout different industries.

Capgemini 5G Labs are bringing customers and partners together to develop 5G use cases and solutions for multiple industries—all in a broader effort to be a frontrunner in developing the 5G ecosystem. A key part of this ecosystem development will be 5G roadmaps: Capgemini can help its customers identify use cases and the business value on offer, and therein plan a transformation journey within the broader context of the ecosystem in combination with other technologies—fueling new business models, customer experiences, and top-line growth. Exhibit 1 shows the TMT enterprise view for doing exactly this; there is an opportunity for service providers to take this baseline and develop 5G solutions for their clients and ecosystems beyond TMT.

Exhibit 1: Customer experience and growth dominate TMT enterprise leaders’ aims—with new business models underpinning these objectives

Source: HFS Research, 2021

Sample: 45 telecom, media, and technology (TMT) enterprise clients of the providers profiled in the HFS TMT Top 10 2021

More companies in more industries are piloting and rolling out 5G solutions—whether it’s the “internet of…” energy, medical equipment, or all things. There’s also an ongoing transformation journey for the telecom industry and its major network operators to approach more of a standardized state—predicted as a 5–10-year journey in a recent Capgemini 5G Lab event. Enterprises and service providers are going through their portfolios to check for 5G applications and the potential for new services, products, and entire business models. Many are then going rapidly into experimentation and prototyping with partners and providers.

Capgemini’s “Intelligent Industry” strategy expanded with the opening of two 5G Labs in March 2021

Capgemini’s 5G Labs bring together its ecosystem of customers and partners for industry experimentation and the deployment of 5G and Edge technologies and solutions. Located in Paris and Mumbai, the two new labs add to Capgemini’s existing lab in Portugal, opened in December 2020.

This 5G Lab investment comes with 2 main objectives: demonstrating use cases to clients that produce tangible outcomes with combinations of 5G, edge, and other technologies (better than a PowerPoint!)—and building an environment to create those new use cases and experiment.

Capgemini’s ambition is to bring 5G solutions across all its sectors, wherever that sector might currently stand in its 5G journey. Its service offering covers 4 pillars: strategy services to understand the benefits and accelerators for transformation including 5G; network services to meet the extreme complexity of 5G, edge, cloud, and other technologies’ architectures and other design choices; service platforms provide the necessary layers and expose the true capabilities of a network; finally, use cases are built and deployed that bring sector expertise to help clients design and scale disruptive innovations.

25 use cases have been built over the past year covering manufacturing (live-streaming and remotely controlling industry operations), energy, automotive, healthcare (image scanning and AR-assisted operations) and life sciences, public safety and smart cities (e.g., crowd management under pandemic restrictions), entertainment and learning, and retail.

The Bottom Line: The TMT industry is a springboard for horizontal cross-industry solutions.

5G is a core part of the near and medium-term in all industries; Capgemini’s 5G Labs have the chance to be one of the shaping and defining forces in the ecosystem by getting their customers and partners moving along their 5G roadmaps.