Despite what the mobile operators will tell you, the fifth generation of mobile connectivity will not spell the end for other wireless connectivity.

In fact, according to a report from Cisco, just short of 60 percent of traffic from mobile devices will be delivered through WiFi or small cells; a fact not lost on Steve Kent, sales director for Purdicom.

“There’s no doubt that 5G will be a buzzword for a little bit of time over the next couple of years.

“But the need of mobile devices are just getting bigger and bigger and I have probably got the best part of 5 or 6 devices that I use myself and I just couldn’t rely on a mobile operators network to work every day so the demand for WiFi and good WiFi and good reliable core networking is always going to be there and that’s if 5G gets it absolutely spot on.”

Speaking at the Purdicom Open day, Kent drew comparisons to the 4G revolution, adding “there was the same situation with 4G when that first came out and people were saying 4G will displace wireless networks.

“But the more and more that people rely on mobile devices, they will have to have good reliable WiFi and the good thing about WiFi is that in most scenarios, in a venue like this, it’s free whereas you have to pay a premium to use 5G networks with the mobile operators.”

THE RESELLER PERSPECTIVE

According to Kent, perhaps unsurprisingly, his is a view shared by Purdicom’s resellers adding that “a lot of our resellers understand the difference between the two technologies.”

He said that the 5G ‘revolution’ would not touch its customer base of schools, hotels and multi-dwelling units, such as student housing, because it’s not just smartphones being used in those buildings.

“Devices will still be 5G enables in a couple of years time just like we are using 4G now but they still need to have that wireless connection to connect their laptops to.

“They’ll still need the connectivity there and the chances are that once they connect their laptops, they’ll connect their mobiles and other devices to that network at the same time so I don’t think necessarily too much will change.”

However, despite his confidence that the talk of 5G replacing traditional forms of connectivity is just that, Kent did say that resellersneed to offer something other than just WiFi.

He cites companies such as Sky as inspiration for new ways to sell connectivity infrastructure.

“When I was an account manager at Purdicom, I tried to talk to my clients about not offering just one solution.

“Our professional services team can go out with our partners and scope the whole offering and quite often what we find is that the end user doesn’t even realise that they have a particular issue or problem and they don’t know how to solve it.

“So, with our presale guys, they will come up with a whole solution and a wrap-around technology to incorporate what they are trying to do and offer a tiered service that might help them fix their problems or complete their goals.

“Our customers need to be slightly creative with the way they are offering WiFi services and that could be managed services off the back of it or it could be a host of complimentary solutions.”

For Purdicom, the focus has shifted onto six vendors as it aims to stay on pace with its ambition to double the size of the business every four years.

“With the launch of WatchGuard, having a really credible security vendor that complements our portfolio is just going to be huge for us.

“By 2021 we are aiming to be a £48 million distributor, we were the 17th fastest growing distributor last year, that kind of nicely falls in line with what we are trying to do.

“We had quite a few manufacturers that we didn’t have so much focus on over the last couple of years, so we are streamlining the manufacturers that we have which are Ruckus, Cambian Networks, Siklu, Certa UPS, WatchGuard and Ascom.

“That’s going to be our focus over the next 12 to 18 months.”