Two interesting reports about the rollout of 5G caught the eye of the 5G and global connectivity teams at Telecom26.
In Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker : Is 5G SA getting real? the analyst firm STL partners wrote that there were:
- 18 launches of converged 5G NSA/SA or pure 5G SA cores in 2022
- 21 in 203
- And to date “only seven deployments materialised in the first 6 months of 2023 leaving a staggering 30 "in progress" and to be completed in the second half of 2023”
However, STL’s analysts write that “although few in number, these deployments are significant either by their scale (Reliance Jio in India) or by virtue of the importance of the operators involved: EE (introduced in the UAE in March); and Vodafone (in the UK in June).
And for Orange, which is engaged in 5G SA deployments across its entire European footprint, the launch of a first country (Spain in February 2023) is encouraging progress”.
Meanwhile GSA (the Global Mobile Suppliers Association) in its 5G SA report of July 2023 writes that “115 operators in 52 countries have been investing in public 5G SA networks in the form of trials, planned or actual employments”.
And that ”several organisations are testing, piloting or deploying 5G SA technologies for private networks” including “manufacturers, academic organisations, commercial research institutes, construction, communications and IT services, rail and aviation”.
STL identifies a number of reasons which explain why operators have been slower than expected in rollout out 5G Sa including:
- the significant investment required “for which (in some markets at least) there is no clear ROI because the use cases that would leverage 5G SA capabilities (in terms of latency, bandwidth or high volume of connections) are yet to emerge, both on the consumer and the enterprise fronts, as are the ways to monetise them”. Although STL also states that the 31 rollouts of both converged 5G NSA and SA in APAC have been driven by “bandwidth-hungry consumer use cases such as gaming, AR/VR, HD/4K content streaming, VoNR, etc”
- “Many operators are still weighing up their strategy for partnering with the hyperscale cloud providers. In particular, this relates to the role of public cloud as an infrastructure platform for 5G SA deployments and the role hyperscaler infrastructure can play in accelerating SA network coverage”
- “Some of the leading operators that are yet to launch SA are also among the main supporters of open RAN and/or are engaged in fibre rollout projects: those conflicting investment requirements may create delays and a need for phasing in some of the rollouts.”
- And finally, “to fully exploit 5G SA requires an organisational evolution within telcos. To reap its benefits as both a pure connectivity enabler and as a platform for innovative services, telcos need to undergo an evolution in their processes and organisations to support cloud practices and operations. This doesn’t happen overnight”.
Telecom26 and 5G
We have written about 5G a number of times and in the first blog below we discussed how 5G as a topic causes some confusion because it’s actually a combination of four different – but related – services that offer new capabilities for different applications and user groups.
5G – Explaining eMBB, FWA, mIoT and URLLC
5G discussions at MWC this week
Telecom26 and our 5G, IoT and eSIM services
The road to 6G..but first 5G and LTE..and your organisation might not need it yet…
At Telecom26 we know that the potential of 5G has yet to be realised but the reality is that 5G was never going to be justified by consumer revenues and demand. We are already discussing with our customers how 5G can benefit them most in the future – and indeed figuring out if they would actually benefit from having access to 5G networks around the world.
Following extensive testing of a number of 5G networks from operators around the world, we added 5G networks to our Global Roaming Service which currently provides seamless coverage across 1100 cellular networks from over 650 mobile operators in more than 200 countries.
We now offer 5G in 50+ countries with more being added once we have tested them and are satisfied with the service. 5G is available to all our customers with the same pricing as our other services so there are no extra charges or hidden costs.
We are currently focusing our efforts on 5G Non Standalone (NSA) as it reuses the existing LTE Core which offers the fastest route to getting the greatest 5G coverage for our customers.
In parallel we are working on ensuring our core network is ready for 5G standalone (SA) for when these roaming agreements become more commonplace.
You can read more about our 5G network here.
Our team is also watching the progress of 6G as its definition and standardisation takes shape.
Catching-up in-person
If you’d like to organise a video call to discuss how we can help improve the global connectivity including maritime connectivity of your team please get in touch.
And, of course, as a full operator member of the GSMA, we’ll be at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next February. Book a meeting.
