Mobile Technology
new applications in robotic automation, massive IoT deployments, and many other areas. Look for the first production use cases for industrial 5G to begin appearing towards the end of 2023, as the first wave of 3GPP Release 16-enabled network equipment and devices hit the market.
● India will displace China as the world’s 5G accelerator: Last year, China drove the 5G market as CSPs rushed to expand 5G coverage everywhere across the vast Chinese nation. This year, India takes pole position. With spectrum auctions concluded, two major Indian carriers are now racing to achieve nationwide coverage in 2023. Of particular interest to the global telecom community, leading Indian CSPs are focusing not just on consumer connectivity, but making a strong push for enterprise private networks as well.
● Meanwhile, China will turn its focus to enterprise use cases: With the push for nationwide coverage largely achieved in 2022, expect China’s 5G Radio investment to slow in the coming year. Look for Chinese operators to begin placing more emphasis on Private Networks using Public 5G for targeted enterprise use cases, especially in logistics and the energy and mining sectors.
● Satellite-to-phone services will see growing momentum: Apple’s recent announcement of satellite-based emergency messaging for the iPhone 14 made major waves—but it’s only the beginning. Significant momentum is now growing around satellite- to-phone services, largely driven by a new generation of modems from Qualcomm and others that support non-terrestrial network connectivity. These modems will begin appearing in end-devices in 2023, and satellite providers are already angling to tap their potential for commercial service offerings. Over the course of 2023, expect significant growth in license applications, testing, and early trials, with early commercial launches starting in 2024. It should be noted, however, that satellite-based support for more advanced services like mobile broadband comes with significant technical and regulatory challenges around spectrum alignment, 3GPP Release 17 support, handset compatibility, and technology performance, especially around large signaling and interference delays from orbit.
● 5G/Wi-Fi convergence starts in earnest this year: In the testing and validation space, we saw significant activity in 2022 around Wi-Fi 6 with growing uptake by enterprises due to its superior capabilities over previous Wi-Fi generations in terms of
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bandwidth, speed, control, and quality. In many cases Wi-Fi 6 was an easy choice for Enterprises due to its compatibility with a company’s existing equipment. In regard to Wi-Fi’s relation to 5G many Enterprises saw its initial benefit in a coexistent model, but also highlighted a desire for future convergence to support enhanced flexibility and differentiation, and in 2023 we expect to see more momentum towards 5G Wi-Fi convergence use cases driven by Enterprise demand and commercial strategies.
● Service providers will make a major push to tame network complexity: CSPs continue to struggle with the complexity introduced by opening up their network environments to new vendors and technologies in 5G, cloud, edge, and other areas. Facing pressure to lower costs and become more agile, more CSPs will heighten their focus on automating across the network lifecycle in 2023. This push will affect many areas of CSP operations, from implementing DevOps processes, to building multi-vendor collaboration environments, to more closely integrating labs and test beds to streamline product development and speed time to market. More operators will also make a serious push to transform service assurance and move more of the network to zero- touch, “self-driving” operations. Testing and RFPs in these areas grew throughout 2022, and the trend will continue in the coming year, especially around assurance and OSS functions. As CSPs face pressure to match hyperscalers that already have full automation, we may begin to see more serious industrywide discussions around removing the structural barriers—chiefly, lack of consistency and standardization— that continue to impede service provider automation.
● Open RAN will continue generating significant attention, but slow adoption: Many CSPs conducted testing and trials of Open RAN architectures in 2022, and this trend will continue in 2023. While CSPs find the idea of multi-vendor, plug-and-play RAN environments compelling, actual solutions are still not mature enough to see large- scale adoption. CSPs and their partners continue to demonstrate the feasibility of multi-vendor RAN interoperability in test beds, but the operational models needed to support Open RAN in large-scale networks remain well behind those of traditional vendors. For 2023, expect to see more CSPs adopting virtualized RAN solutions from traditional vendors, while continuing to test Open RAN in small trial deployments.
Network security
● SD-WAN providers will continue evolving into a cloud-based network security market: For the last few years, vendors and analysts have been advocating an updated network security model for a world dominated by work-from-home/ work-from-anywhere (WFH/WFA) employees. This model, sometimes called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), enables more secure and flexible network connectivity by combining SD-WAN with cloud-based security services. SASE solutions saw steady growth in 2022, as SD-WAN and security vendors worked to develop a new generation of cloud-based security offerings. Now, these offerings are mature enough that 2023 will be the year SASE becomes the dominant model for enterprise networks.
● Zero Trust network access will see wide-scale adoption: Often combined with SASE, Zero Trust authentication models will see significant growth in 2023. Zero Trust adds new layers of context and granularity to authentication, and locks down access by default unless the right conditions are met. While this is not a new model, it is particularly well suited to environments that can’t be protected by a traditional enterprise security perimeter. As enterprises continue bringing workers back into the office this year, and find themselves managing a more diverse mix
of on-campus, WFH, and WFA employees, Zero Trust solutions will see significant growth.
Sustainability
● CSPs and vendors will focus more attention and investment on hitting sustainability targets: 2022 saw a greater focus around energy management and sustainability targets especially towards the 5G radio networks with new capabilities for energy efficiency, new cooling techniques and the use of renewables. There was also heightened focus on Lab R&D environments and Data Centres where automation was shown to reduce energy utilization on average by 40 per cent through a combination of powering down not in use equipment, more efficient resource utilization and the ability to consolidate facilities and real-estate. In 2023, look for more CSPs and network equipment vendors to invest in accurately metering and measuring emissions. Specifically, they will focus on finding ways to meter indirect “Scope 3” emissions—those generated by assets within an organisation’s value chain, but that the organisation does not directly own or control. This will become a more urgent priority for CSPs pursuing densification of their 5G networks, who will look to get ahead of the curve on this issue, before governments and regulatory agencies mandate action.
https://www.spirent.com/ Components in Electronics February 2023 43
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