It's fair to say that deployments of standalone 5G (5G SA)
technology have not been coming thick and fast, with studies such
as the latest Ericsson Mobility Report in June es ma ng that only
around 50 5G SA networks have been launched globally to date.
According to the recent update of the Telco Cloud Deployment
Tracker from STL Partners for Q2 2024, because so many
planned deployments have failed to materialize, "the window
of opportunity for rolling out 5G SA may be closing before it has
even got going."
David Mar n, senior analyst and telco cloud lead at STL Partners,
told Fierce that although "lots of promises" were made about 5G
SA deployments around 2021 and 2022, many of them have not
yet been realized.
"There's been almost total silence on the part of the operators
about them. We've come to the conclusion that, actually, a lot of
those [planned deployments] are never going to be completed,"
Mar n said.
According to STL Partners, this is owing to a number of different
factors. As explained by Mar n, operators have poten ally been
deferring 5G SA deployments because of uncertain es about
standalone itself combined with a lack of confidence about
deploying 5G SA on the public cloud.
"There's a kind of vicious circle going on, which is that
standalone is, in a sense, a network func on that is ideally
suited for deployment on the public cloud, but operators have
understandably been very unsure about all of the broader
implica ons of doing that in terms of regula ons, performance,
security, resilience, and so on," Mar n said.
Mar n noted that greater confidence about 5G SA use cases
might lead more operators to deploy it on the public cloud,
Is the window closing
for standalone 5G?
Talleycom.com
SHEET
QUARTER 3 2024
