- Many planned 5G SA deployments have not materialized
- According to STL Partners, uncertainty among operators regarding 5G SA and deployment in the public cloud may be a factor.
- Analyst firm sees more promising outlook for vRAN and open RAN
The adoption of standalone 5G (5G SA) technology has not been rapid, with studies such as the latest Ericsson Mobility Report from June estimating that only around 50 5G SA networks have been launched worldwide to date.
According to the latest update of STL Partners’ Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker for Q2 2024, “the window to deploy 5G SA may be closing before it even begins” as many planned deployments never materialized.
David Martin, senior analyst and communications cloud leader at STL Partners, told Fierce that while “a lot of promises” have been made about the rollout of 5G SA around 2021 and 2022, much of this has yet to be delivered.
“Operators are pretty quiet about them. We actually [planned deployments] It will never be finished,” Martin said.
According to STL Partners, this is down to a variety of factors: As Martin explains, operators may be postponing the rollout of 5G SA due to the uncertainty of standalone itself, combined with a lack of confidence in deploying 5G SA on the public cloud.
“There’s a kind of vicious cycle going on, where standalone is in some ways a perfect network capability for deployment into the public cloud, but operators are understandably very nervous about the wider implications of doing that in terms of regulation, performance, security, resiliency and so on,” Martin said.
Martin noted that growing confidence in 5G SA use cases could lead to more operators deploying SA in the public cloud, for example, though he said that apart from the possibility of network slicing, “very few use cases have been developed and commercially launched.”
Moreover, operators are already struggling to realize benefits from their existing investments in non-standalone 5G (5G NSA).
STL also noted changes within the public cloud providers themselves, noting, for example, that a restructuring of operator businesses has led to the discontinuation of core mobile products, including the former Affirmed and Metaswitch product sets, raising questions about Microsoft’s approach to telco cloud.
“I think that’s causing even more hesitation now. AWS is ideally positioned to take advantage of that situation and establish leadership and advantage in terms of supporting network capabilities for the public cloud, but telcos clearly don’t want to give AWS an advantage, so they may have to wait until other operators have scaled up and demonstrated the performance and resiliency of their cloud infrastructure,” Martin said.
He noted that Google Cloud and Oracle are two providers that could “step into the issue” here.
Looking ahead to 5G Advanced and 6G
Another reason for the hesitation towards 5G SA may be that some operators are now focusing on newer technologies such as 5G Advanced and 6G.
Martin said standalone is generally not required for 5G Advanced (also known as 5.5G) use cases, but noted that RedCap technology is an exception because it relies on 5G SA’s network slicing and extensive machine-based communications (eMTC) capabilities. “So if RedCap is adopted more widely, that could act as a catalyst,” he said.
Additionally, many carriers are now nearing the end of their 5G investment cycle and “will start looking towards 6G,” Martin noted.
Martin noted that tier 1 operators that have deployed 5G SA at scale “will now look to recoup their investment” by developing use cases for network slicing, but added that “many operators that aren’t there yet will likely take a wait-and-see approach, exploring 5.5G and postponing standalone indefinitely.”
Virtual Approach
Meanwhile, the STL report suggests that the outlook for vRAN and open RAN (vRAN is defined as Open RAN compliant, but typically provided by a single vendor) is more promising than 5G SA.
Here, Martin makes it clear that operators do not need to synchronize their investments in 5G SA and vRAN/open RAN, and one does not necessarily dictate the other.
At the same time, operators are unsure about which investments to prioritize and are questioning “whether 5G SA is necessary to really get the most out of the benefits of open RAN, particularly in terms of RAN programmability around network slicing and spectrum management,” he said. “So I think that’s a complicating factor, too.”
“I think telcos, not just SA, have been wrestling with these questions for the last two to three years: What do we do about public cloud? Should we adopt a full multi-cloud model? It’s all connected and you can’t think about one in isolation from the bigger picture,” he added.
The STL report noted that significant open/vRAN projects from major operators such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and STC are expected to reach some level of commercialization in 2024. The vRAN model “has the potential to establish itself as a successful model for 5G open RAN,” Martin added.
“A lot of factors still need to come together – performance, cost, energy efficiency and the ability to demonstrate that it’s being deployed in an open way – but I think the potential for vRAN is huge,” he said.
