5G - Review of 5G technology Readiness and Commercialization

5G - Review of 5G technology Readiness and Commercialization

Summary

5G: Review of 5G technology readiness and commercialization” is a Global Outlook Report by GlobalData that gives an overview of the emerging 5G standard and the main market requirement trends worldwide with a competitive insight to players driving 5G deployment. With 5G deployments now fully available and mobile 5G deployments underway in all regions, operators are facing the early phase of massive 5G adoption.

This report identifies the technology underpinning the move toward deployment of 5G networks. The report focuses on key developments across the radio, core and transport network domains as well as 5G services. The report also identifies the established and emerging vendors participating in the 5G market and identifies important networking innovations being developed to enable network operators to achieve 5G's full potential.

The report is structured as follows -

• Section 1: The 5G Radio Access Network. This section discuses about newly developed 5G RAN standards with insights to market requirement behind 5G RAN deployment and explanation to available and emerging 5G RAN technologies. It also provides competitive study of incumbent as well as challengers offering virtual RAN and open RAN solutions operating in this segment.
• Section 2: The 5G Core. Here we discuses about 5G converged core offerings, with insights to market requirement behind 5G core deployment and explanation to available and emerging 5G core technologies. It also provides competitive study of incumbent as well as relatively new players or challengers operating in this segment which is further sub-segmented into IP services infrastructure and evolved packet core.
• Section 3: The 5G Transport Network. Here we discuss the importance of a programmable IP and optical transport network in order to achieve 5G's potential in terms of latency, reliability, and cost effectiveness.
• Section 4: 5G Services. Here we discuss the importance of managed and professional services provided by infrastructure vendors focused on 5G network design and deployment, training, service creation and monetization, and ongoing operations.
• Section 4: Key Recommendations. We conclude the report with a set of key findings and critical considerations and recommendations for operators and vendors in 5G market.

• 5G standards enabling more sophisticated 5G services continue to develop. 3GPP release 16 specifications frozen in June 2020 address 'standalone' (SA) network deployments, including the 5G new radio (NR) and a cloud-native core (5GC). A converged core which supports all generations of mobile traffic has emerged and leverages the flexibility of cloud-native technologies to deliver on a broad range of services. Advancing standards will help operators move beyond enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) to support applications that require low latency, higher performance and user plane distribution closer to the end user (MEC).
• 5G-related radio advancements are helping operators evolve from 4G/LTE to 5G. For example offerings that allow 4G and 5G to share spectrum resources - so-called Dynamic Spectrum Sharing - are becoming commercially available in 2020; and vendors are expanding their roster of radio products with multiple antennas -- massive MIMO (multiple input-multiple output) -- to improve both network efficiency and customer experience.
• 5G core offerings from a host of vendors, including Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE, have advanced significantly in 2019 and H1 2020. As a result, operators have a host of options that can support legacy services on LTE, 3G, or even 2G networks even as they evolve to 5G solutions.
• 5G transport requirements dictate significant increase of bandwidth to the RRU of 10 Gbps and more; backhaul connectivity to CU will scale to 100 Gbps. 5G advanced use cases have very stringent synchronization and latency requirements as well, and vendors need to offer solutions that fulfill these 5G transport requirements cost-effectively, while also taking into account physical constraints (space and power available). Vendors should also take into account interworking between 5G transport and 5G core, and deploy solutions that serve other network domains as well (fixed access, carrier Ethernet, etc.) to optimize costs of 5G transport deployment and operation.
• Virtually all vendors of telecommunications software and services provide basic support and maintenance functions for their products. However, vendors are increasingly devoting focus to services specifically related to 5G. These include network design and optimization, training, business consulting and systems integration services in addition to a host of managed services.

• 5G: Review of 5G technology readiness and commercialization provides a global view of emerging standards for deploying 5G RAN, core and transport elements and related services as well as competitive study of vendors/operators supporting 5G network deployment.
• This analysis is useful for telecom executives to evaluate emerging portfolios to address the major growth opportunities in 5G and make informed decisions about partner identification, strategic investments, value proposition and growth strategies to rapidly grow their 5G networks.