The industry is still on track to deliver 5G Standalone and various types of virtualised RAN – but progress is a lot slower than originally expected. In this update of the Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker, we look beneath the hood of the numbers to assess what if anything will accelerate growth in 2024.
New players, technologies and business models are raising the prospect of valuable, new satellite connectivity services. But how credible are the new opportunities and what do operators need to do?
There is much debate in the industry on the topic of edge computing, but little clarity for vendors and potential customers on how much capacity will be available. STL Partners’ Network Edge Data Centre Forecast estimates the number of network edge data centres and their capacity from 2021-2027. We also breakdown who will operate these sites: telcos, hyperscalers or other third parties.
The first commercial deployments of open RAN networks have been announced. But operators are unsure whether to deploy quickly for first-mover advantage or play it safe and wait for more proof points. We explore the causes of open RAN inertia and how operators can get deployments back on track.
AI applications will require low-latency, local compute for rapid inferencing and large scale data collection, triage, and engineering. Edge compute will therefore play a key role in AI app delivery. However it’s not just about infrastructure – commercial scale for edge AI will depend on effective ecosystem collaboration models.
Since 2015 STL Partners has helped telecoms operators to develop their edge computing strategies. We summarise our learnings from those engagements as a manifesto for how the industry can address the edge computing opportunity.