Spirent Communications recently released its sixth annual 5G Outlook Report, drawing on analysis and takeaways from 315 5G engagements globally in 2024. The latest report looks at progress made during the first five years of 5G, as well as highlighting key tactics being prioritised to grow revenues and opportunities in the second half of implementing 5G.
“Early revenue expectations for 5G were tempered following deployment and availability challenges during the first half of the 5G era,” said Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent. “But as 5G Standalone (SA) deployments continue to grow and 5G Advanced starts to take off, telecom is poised to deliver the true capabilities of 5G that meet industry needs. Notable early successes like 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) underscore long-term opportunity, and entering the second half of the 5G era, there’s everything to play for as 5G services present a pathway to monetisation with a range of other technologies combining to comprise a strong foundation for sustainable growth.”
Spirent worked with 50 plus service providers, network equipment manufacturers and hyperscalers on 5G SA and 5G Advanced testing in 2024. Key drivers included performance, security, resilience, lifecycle management, customer experience, and service-based testing.
Key takeaways include:
- 5G SA and 5G-Advanced testing are encouraging indicators for acceleration in 2025. The testing efforts undertaken during 2024 by global telecom stakeholders emphasise the priorities for future 5G networks. Spirent had over 50 unique 5G SA customer engagements and 30 of those were network operators, with many expected to go commercially live in the next 12-18 months
- 5G Cloud-Native Core is the catalyst for automation and lifecycle management initiatives. Demand grew for automated continuous testing (CT) integrated into Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline processes which is foundational for seamless lifecycle management and agile lab-to-live delivery
- 5G security and resilience is a growing focus for 5G SA commercial deployments. Customers put increased focus on validating the security and resilience of cloud-native functions (CNFs). This helped service providers build confidence that 5G SA will be able to handle complex, real-world demands and deliver service continuity
- Customer experience is essential for driving revenue growth. Spirent saw increased demand for quality of experience (QoE) testing and competitive benchmarking for key service offerings, including 5G FWA, in-home Wi-Fi, Voice over New Radio (VoNR), gaming, and multi-access edge computing (MEC)
- 5G services provide pathways to monetisation.There was increased emphasis on validating advanced capabilities and use cases including 5G reduced-capability (5G RedCap) for IoT, 5G roaming, Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) services, time-sensitive networking (TSN) in private networks, and security slices
- IP-transport network is foundational for long-term success. Growing attention on IP-core upgrades to 400G, higher capacities to Edge locations, and the introduction of Segment Routing (SRv6) as operators prepare for differentiated 5G offerings and the impact and monetisation opportunity AI brings to their network
- 5G SA device and handset service experience testing engagements highlighted the increased focus on the performance and experience of new services around immersive voice, video and video-chat as operators look to launch new consumer and enterprise private network offerings
The report notes that emerging and future key players are likely to influence the second half of 5G era, including 5G FWA expansion towards enterprises and ubran markets, 5G low-altitude economy and non-terrestrial networks, the role of AI in telecoms, augmented reality and artificial intelligence assisted video, and 6G early focus.
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