LIVE FROM MWL UNWRAPPED: Orange CTO Laurent Leboucher dismissed the prospect economic pressures could hamper 5G uptake from customers, highlighting efforts to ensure it was cost-effective together with the creation of new services based on the technology.

During his keynote, Leboucher said with 5G Orange “addressed strong needs” of its customers and added it planned to introduce differentiation and new kinds of services using the standalone iteration.

“In general, as a whole, we are quite confident that we can monetise 5G correctly,” he added.

Part of the operator’s plan to generate revenue from the new network technology includes within private networks and addressing verticals such as smart factories. This is in addition to general benefits of high service quality and good coverage brought by 5G.

5G progress
Leboucher indicated the company was making good progress with 5G in Europe. It is in the process of installing new core infrastructure across six markets to support the standalone variant, with the expectation these will be fully deployed in 2023.

For industry, the move to standalone will open a range of opportunities, Leboucher reiterated, noting the ability to support specialised services in segments such as healthcare and transportation.

However, during the push to 5G across customer segments, he noted the need to be “very consistent between what we do in terms of handsets, smartphones and also networks”.

He added 60 per cent of the devices it sells in shops are 5G compatible and it had also worked helping “business to use and be completely comfortable with 5G” through facilities such as its various laboratories.

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