As operators embark on their telco cloud journeys, what should they look out for and what lessons can they learn from others? This report analyses the strategies and progress of four operators leading the way in telco cloud transformation and sheds light on the lessons learned from their initial deployments.
In this update, we look at the new deployments completed by 31 March 2023 or confirmed for completion by the end of 2023 or during 2024, and provide the usual update of telco cloud deployments including new data for 2023 and 2024. Our deep dive this quarter is on SD-WAN and SASE services.
We found subtle but significant shifts at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress 2023 that show how the market’s need is changing to ‘connecting technologies’ rather than ‘connectivity’. This has deep implications for the industry and telcos in particular.
Nine change stakeholders describe their experience of telco transformation, providing insights on the change process and learnings for others that are remodelling their organisations for the future.
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.
Co-operation with hyperscalers can reap rewards – but only if telcos complete the hard work of cloudification first.
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?
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.
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 came with the promise of agility and returns. Our latest in-depth research examines the evidence, why telcos still believe it will deliver, and what needs to be done to achieve that.
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.
More telcos are making deals to run their VNFs on the public cloud. Not much is live yet. But cloud hosting of network functions will support telcos in realising the benefits of cloud-native, and we believe telcos can safely go further and faster.
New growth from 5G standalone, RAN and SASE is getting underway, amidst maturity and decline in foundational deployments.
As telecoms operations become increasingly softwarised, network functions are getting broken down into their individual parts, and reassembled as an essential part of the IT stack for industry-specific applications and services. In this disaggregated telco value chain, is there anything left that is distinctively ‘telco’?
Global O-RAN capex forecasts 2020–2030, modelling operator investments across four migration pathways.
5G is now the main driver of VNF deployment. But can telcos be cloud-native without being hyperscaler-dependent?
STL Partners believes that telco cloud is a crucial enabler for operators’ success in the Coordination Age. In this manifesto we explain why.