At the start of 2023, we were hopeful that the year would be that of 5G SA. In the event, only seven deployments materialised in the first 6 months leaving a staggering 30 in our tracker as “in progress” and to be completed in the second half of 2023. In this report, we discuss how likely it is that these deployments will take place in 2023 or at all and if 5G SA still matters.
In this update, we present a review of telco cloud deployments for the whole of 2022 and discuss trends that will shape the year ahead. Fewer deployments than expected were completed in 2022. The main reason for this was a delay in previously announced 5G Standalone (SA) core roll-outs, for reasons we have analysed elsewhere. However, we expect these deployments to be largely completed in 2023.
In a market written off by many as too competitive and complicated, Reliance Jio has risen extraordinarily quickly to be the leading operator in India, playing a major role in the delivery of Digital India. How did it do it, and what can others learn?