Trend
Six key predictions for 2024 By Stephen Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent 1
2024 will see accelerated 5G Standalone/5G Core deployments The telecoms industry always expected that moving to
full 5G Standalone (5G SA) networks would be a heavy lift. Indeed, 5G SA network deployments were sluggish last year, mostly because of the technical challenges involved in integrating new, cloud-native 5G Core technologies. This year, the market is expected to accelerate. So, what’s changed? For the first time, the demand for new 5G SA functionalities and the supply of supporting network equipment and devices are finally aligned. On the supply side we’ve seen a huge number of 5G SA offerings come to market, by at least 17 equipment makers and over 80 5G SA modem and chipset providers – there are over 1,400 5G SA type devices available. There are also growing preparations
to launch premium 5G SA services, which include Voice over 5G New Radio, network slicing and reliable low-latency solutions for industrial applications. We anticipate some 100 5G-SA networks to be commercially deployed by early 2025. Suppliers see this 5G market as ready to scale, especially with the growing demand in the following: • Enterprise private networks, which will require 5G SA for their guaranteed throughput and availability, low latency and security capabilities;
• Gaming and extended reality (XR) applications, which require consistent throughput and very low latency; and
• Government/military applications, especially in remote areas, which requires secure, reliable connectivity. Although applications will continue
to grow throughout 2024, there won’t be an explosion of new 5G SA deployments overnight. Rather, customers will pursue a controlled growth strategy, starting
04 March 2024
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with smaller initial deployments and then scaling up over the next few years.
2
XR will enter real-world applications The market has been talking about XR and augmented reality (AR) for several years
as potential key applications for 5G. 2024 will see this become reality. We expect a wave of new XR applications, thanks to growing customer demand and newly- available XR devices. The Asia-Pacific market will initially
lead the way here, partly due to the large gaming industry, but also major government initiatives that require XR for military and industrial applications. The rest of the world won’t be far behind, as XR applications gradually spread to other markets this year and next. Growing XR adoption will also push
service providers to guarantee quality of experience (QoE) for such services via service-level agreements (SLAs). QoE considerations will expand beyond audio/video and latency metrics to
address other parameters, including the products’ thermal efficiency, battery life, weight and overall comfort. These will be important in applications like XR for business (training, assisted maintenance, remote support) and gaming, and anywhere else that users wear XR headsets for long periods of time.
3
Service providers will invest in automation and AI to fuel the digital transformation 5G isn’t the only priority
for service providers next year – we are also seeing a growing number of digital transformation initiatives for improved agility and capital efficiency. Many of these will focus on automation and cloud migration, especially operational support systems transformation. Initially, most automation initiatives
will be dominated by basic machine learning (ML), as AI applications are still in their infancy. For many operators, big questions remain about
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