The march toward 5G continues what has been a natural progression of cellular technology innovation dating back to the early 1980s. But the economic impact stuffed into the promise of 5G is making this evolution the most significant.

We are just over a year into actual 5G deployments and so far these networks have made substantial progress. Industry trade group GSMA recently proclaimed that 5G networks were live in 24 countries. Some operators even claim “nationwide” 5G coverage, which is impressive unless you look at just what “nationwide” means and how wide a country really is.

Industry trade group 5G Americas cited an Omdia report that counted more than 17.7 million 5G connections at the end of last year, including a 329% surge during the final three months of 2019. Omdia is also predicting 91 million 5G connections by the end of 2020.

Despite its nascent status, the 5G ecosystem is already swimming in financial might. That same GSMA report predicts 5G technology will add $2.2 trillion to the global economy over the next 15 years. And operators are expected to spend more than $1 trillion on mobile capex between 2020 and 2025, with 80% of that spend directed at their 5G networks.

While past technology evolutions primarily targeted the consumer market, the spend and return on 5G has a larger focus on the broader enterprise space. This includes connecting not just traditional enterprise workers and their respective mobile devices but connecting all electronic devices. This will involve a broader push toward edge deployments that can serve what are expected to be billions of connected and IoT devices.

“With greater reliability and data speeds that will surpass those of 4G networks, a combination of 5G and local edge compute will pave the way for new business value,” ABI Research noted in a recent report, citing benefits gained from agility and process optimization; better and more efficient quality assurance and productivity improvement. That report predicts the market for 5G cellular connections in manufacturing could reach nearly $11 billion by 2030.

Juniper Research predicts that 5G IoT connections will surge from $525 million in operator-billed revenues this year to $8 billion in 2024. It cited the automotive and smart cities sectors as key growth drivers for 5G adoption over the next 5 years.

“We believe that only 5% of 5G connections will be attributable to the IoT, but as these are newly enabled connections, operators must view them as essential to securing a return on their 5G investment,” explained research author Andrew Knighton.

This opportunity will also be a boon for vendors that will be supplying most of the hardware for these deployments, though the real benefit will be for those that can also adapt those platforms to take advantage of true 5G capabilities.

“The implications for solution providers such as Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE are that they must enhance their ‘value add’ by complementing their deep technical expertise with business expertise including vertical industry knowledge, new functional expertise (sales, marketing, and accounting), and solution design and consulting expertise tailored at niche use cases,” said Don Alusha, senior analyst at ABI Research.