The API (application programming interface) is where we need to concentrate to get customers hooked on 5G.
Cisco’s CTO of Mobility Business thinks the API (application programming interface) may be more important for the success of 5G than anything else.
“If 5G is going to be successful, are we really thinking about it being the right ecosystem at all?” asked Dr. Sam Samuels, CTO for Cisco’s Mobility Business Group during his presentation at 5G North America’s New Horizons event last week in Austin, Tex. Samuels was part of a panel on 5G ecosystems.
Samuels posited that the industry’s traditional mark of success in 5G — customer experience and verticals — is not the right measurement. Giving customers ultra-low latency and large bandwidth is not what will make 5G catch on, he said.
Industry is concentrating on its idea of an ecosystem, a list of verticals and must haves — spectrum, devices, bandwidth, business models, low latency all built on silicon base. Samuels says this is not correct.
“The traditional view of a network is no longer the idea of moving bits from A to B. Really it is the ability to get applications to communicate across a distance. The iPad, the iPhone, all these kinds of devices are promoting application usage. And the apps talk to themselves just for good measure,” he said.
Having the fungible device — the smart phone — is key. “We have gone from dedicated devices to fungible devices” like smart phones,” Samuels said. “That fungible device when mixed with a platform is a very potent mix.”
He cited how iPhone apps went from applications that Apple wrote to applications written by a large community of developers. “That is the kind of success we are looking for in 5G,” he said.
The usable API therefore is key to customers adopting platforms.
“APIs themselves promote use of a platform,” he said. Being able to interact with a platform through easy to use programming interfaces will . Opening up new business models and services won’t materialize if you don’t have an easy-to-use API.
“Are we really promoting that?” he asked.
5G as a system needs to be a platform with usable APIs. If it is not simple, people won’t use it, he said.
