Fibre for 5G and edge: Who does it and how to build it?
There is now a valuable but specialised opportunity in building out fibre to support small 5G cells in high value areas. Which players should address it and how?
Tag: Networks
Beating the crash: What’s coming?
There are troubling signals in the business environment. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low due to inflation, conflict, Covid and climate change. What are the consequences for telecoms, and what should telcos, vendors, policymakers and others in the ecosystem do?
In the first of two reports we examine the macro forces and outline three key steps to reshape priorities and the strategy agenda.
Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: 5G core deep dive
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.
Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: Open RAN deep dive
In this update we present more granular data into the RAN to track the shift towards disaggregation across vendor ecosystems. It is still very early days with open RAN and vRAN, with 33 deployments in total, but we expect this to accelerate over the coming year.
Convergence, coexistence or competition: How will 5G and Wi-Fi 6 interact?
As standards for Wi-Fi and cellular become increasingly entwined, there has never been a greater technical possibility for convergence. This report explores the market view of future convergence from both supply and demand side perspectives.
Revisiting convergence: How to address the growth imperative
The forces of divergence and convergence have shifted in favour of the latter, with the move to cloud native and software-defined networking. We evaluate how operators can take advantage of convergence to drive greater efficiencies, scale economies and service innovation.
Telco Cloud Deployment Tracker: 5G standalone and RAN
New growth from 5G standalone, RAN and SASE is getting underway, amidst maturity and decline in foundational deployments.
NFV Deployment Tracker: Global review and update
SDN and NFV deployment is growing deeper but not broader: the long tail lags behind the pioneers.
NFV Deployment Tracker: Asia takes the lead
This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on Asia-Pacific, alongside European and North American data to March 2018. Telcos in developed Asian markets have made a great start, and the region has outstripped Europe and North America in live SDN / NFV deployments – but can NFV scale to Asia as a whole?
NFV Deployment Tracker – North America: SD-WAN tail wags NFV dog
This update to our ‘NFV Deployment Tracker’ series focuses on North America, alongside additional European data. 2016/7 has seen the rise of SD-WAN, enabling smaller operators to compete in the WAN market with NFV leaders AT&T, Verizon, Masergy, CenturyLink, etc. By contrast, fewer consumer use cases for NFV have yet been established.
AI on the Smartphone: What telcos should do
Artificial intelligence (AI) is more powerful and affordable than ever, and the leading consumer-facing AI platforms – Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – are in an arms race to bring the technology to smartphones. AI will radically change the way people use smartphones, but what are the implications for data traffic and consumer expectations, and what role should telcos play in this evolution?
NFV Deployment Tracker: Europe (September 2017)
STL Partners has compiled a new quarterly-updated tracker service of commercial deployments of NFV and SDN by leading telcos worldwide, providing an Excel database accompanied by an analytical report. The first update, devoted to Europe, found operators and vendors focusing on core network virtualisation and SDN/SD-WAN have so far led the way, as timelines on more systematic transformation programmes have been extended.
5G: The spectrum game is changing – but how to play?
5G deployments will need new allocations of radio spectrum, particularly to achieve promised speeds, and target new IoT use-cases. However, the official process for releasing new frequencies is slow and cumbersome. Some countries may short-circuit the process. At the same time, the rationale for new sharing mechanisms, that allow industrial and vertical players to acquire spectrum for their own networks, outside of MNO control, is growing. What should telcos do?
MWC 2016: 5G and Wireless Networks
5G was one of the dominant topics at MWC 2016, and a key theme was the push by many infrastructure vendors and chipset manufacturers to bring forward the timeline for development of an early version of 5G. Some leading operators are also stepping up to support this vision. Fortunately, the “early 5G” group’s wish-list is relatively simple: it’s about capacity, cost, and carbon dioxide.
MWC 2016: The Cloud/NFV Transformation Needle Moves
What was hot at MWC? We round up the action around cloud, SDN, and NFV – and discuss the impact of open-source.
4G Roll Out Analysis: Winning Strategies and 5G Implications
As LTE adoption passes 50% in North America and 9% worldwide, we review the operators who did best and worst and draw conclusions for the mass adoption phase of 4G. The analysis provides a valuable template for all players in the 4G race, and has important implications for plans for 5G.
Huawei’s choice: 5G visionary, price warrior or customer champion?
Huawei’s business performance in recent years has been impressive, based on sticking closely to what its customers wanted and making the results easy to buy. But fierce price competition will challenge near-term profit ambitions, and Huawei’s 5G vision is ahead of the market. So could things be about to change?