It was no surprise that AI dominated MWC this year. But there were lots of other notable trends on the rise – including cybersecurity and data centres – and some that were disappointingly overlooked. Find out what the STL Partners team saw and missed at MWC 2025.
Will artificial intelligence, immersive services, automated transportation and robotics drive a substantial increase in telecom traffic between now and 2032?
Ten years of private network deployments tracked in our global insights tool.
This report explores private network delivery models – on-premises, hybrid and network slicing. It also offers insights into deployment strategies, market opportunities and actionable recommendations for telcos to address diverse enterprise connectivity needs across industries.
Telco cloud deployment activity slowed down in Q2 2024 with only 20 deployments added to the tracker, eight of which were completed in earlier years. The remaining 12 included five 5G NSA cores (four already launched) and three SA cores, all of which we expect to go live by the end of 2024. In this report we analyse the prospects for 5G SA including a deep-dive on the state of deployments on the public cloud.
The telecoms industry is awash with talk of the revenue opportunity from network exposure. This report highlights the main findings from our recently released network API monetisation market forecast tool, focusing on the use cases and APIs which will generate long-term growth.
Vendors and hyperscalers want to serve telcos with cloud-native network functions that are public cloud-ready – but there are few takers. What should they do?
This playbook provides telcos with an understanding of the fundamentals of the gaming market and where they could fit into it. Following a thorough assessment of telco activities in this area, STL Partners presents four service types and roles that telcos can take, with detailed case studies and analysis to help operators choose their path in gaming.
Telco cloud activity in 2024 is showing signs of growing momentum with 72 deployments in the year to date, in contrast to 90 for the whole of 2023. Even though many of these deployments are announced but yet to complete in 2024, there are improving prospects for vRAN and open RAN, alongside a positive outlook for 5G standalone.
STL Partners’ Research team present their observations from and analysis of the biggest mobile industry event of the year. There was a lot of buzz around AI and API but behind the tech jargon, we saw evidence that our industry continues to morph to become more open and customer-focused.
2023 concluded with 87 telco cloud deployments in our tracker. In this edition, we present the most popular vendor stacks for vRAN/open RAN and the main rationales behind the 11 5G SA launches last year.
Consumers and employees are beginning to adopt wearable devices that can live stream video to image recognition systems and expert advisors. Over time, these devices will place new demands on cellular networks.
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.
Telcos and policymakers need new metrics to power evidence-based decisions. New tools and data sources can help build greater understanding and transparency in telecoms.
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 data and analysis on progress with deployments of vRAN and open RAN. It is fair to say that open RAN (virtualised AND disaggregated RAN) deployments have not happened at the pace that STL Partners and many others had forecast. In parallel, some very significant deployments and developments are occurring with vRAN (virtualised NOT disaggregated RAN). Is open RAN a networking ideal that is not yet, or never will be, deployed in its purest form?
In this update, we present granular data on the 5G core, tracking the progress of deployments of both Non-standalone (NSA) and Standalone (SA) network cores. We recorded 49 5G core deployments so far in 2022, 24 of which are SA launches.