Filipinos believe the most critical use cases for 5G will be virtual business collaboration experiences and industrial/corporate applications. This is followed by consumer deployments, such as gaming/esports and smart vehicles, according to a recent study commissioned by Ciena.

“5G will play an important role in driving digital transformation across the Philippines and powering applications that require the lowest latency possible. To deliver high-content 5G applications, such as video and Internet of Things, operators will require computing resources at the edge cloud, closer to the end user,” said Ciena Chief Technology Officer of Asia Pacific and Japan Anup Changaroth in a press statement.

Virtual collaboration in the age of 5G

As the world embraces 5G technology, edge computing will be even more crucial for businesses. This decentralized system brings computing to the source of the data, or near it. Moreover, just as with software, consumers and business customers will expect these edge devices to improve continuously.

As the Philippines looks ahead to 5G in the coming years, real-time data transfer and better use of data analytics (34 percent) ranked highest as expecting to have the most impact from 5G, followed by enhancing digital experiences (20 percent) and creating new revenue streams (15 percent). To prepare for 5G, 91 percent of respondents from the Philippines believe that the availability of infrastructure is the most important factor for adoption.

The appetite to invest in 5G is high. Nearly half (45 percent) of Filipino decision makers are willing to spend up to 15 percent of their budget on 5G, compared to respondents in Indonesia (40 percent) but less than those in Japan (60 percent) and Singapore (51 percent), which were also surveyed.

Ciena has been in the Philippines for more than 15 years and serves local service providers, including Converge ICT and PLDT, as well as enterprises.