Who owns enterprise 5G, Edge and LAN services?

Nothing beats an industry cocktail party for loosening lips. After a pinot grigio and a couple of cheese puffs, opinions unfit for a packed auditorium get aired in private.

"Deciding who owns enterprise 5G, edge and LAN services is one of our biggest internal political issues," confided one telco executive. He is rightly worried that when a fight is internal and external, nobody wins.

Beware: At a time when the magic begins to be real, technologically, shoring up silos limits possibilities. What we urgently need are more conversations across stakeholders to stimulate new ideas, create partnerships of equals and build ecosystems that can truly thrive.

Not only is the stakeholder community getting bigger – as the non-scientific sample of guests I met at Omdia's event indicated – but so also is the prize. With connectivity-only services, telcos could look forward to capturing less than a quarter of enterprise IT expenditure, according to Omdia's IT Spending Predictor.

Today the stakes are tremendously higher: the global economic upside of 5G diffused across industries; the rebalancing of power in technology purchasing; the emergence of new service providers.

Meanwhile, telcos are still squabbling over who owns a product line? Someone better put their big-girl pants on soon.

— Camille Mendler, Chief Analyst, Enterprise Services, Omdia