Connectivity is becoming central to almost every aspect of our lives. It has radically changed our lifestyle, enhanced our productivity, transformed the way we work and do business, and reduced the digital divide between developed and developing countries. As a result, demand for telecommunication technologies has exploded, touching almost every node of the infrastructure from the long haul to access networks, such as fixed broadband.
Recently, ABI Research wrote a research report taking a deep dive into the current public safety network environment. One of the main highlights was that, while 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular broadband is efficient in public safety use cases, 5G is fast approaching the emergency services space. The superior positioning, latency, and reliability of a 5G network will enable emergency services and emergency response teams to work more efficiently, gather better situational awareness, and accomplish the ultimate goal—save lives by reducing response times.
Like virtually every other industry, the telecommunications (telecom) industry has been affected by current macroeconomic and geopolitical trends (war in Europe, high inflation, global warming, etc.), causing doubt about the future of their enterprise. In some areas, the influence of these key telecom trends may not be as severe as you’d think, but in other areas, there are some radical departures taking place. To help operators and ecosystem players understand the effects of ongoing global challenges, and how to plan for the future, ABI Research has compiled some of the most important developments surrounding the telecoms sector.
DISH’s 5G Network Deployment Plans
DISH Wireless has been in the forefront of the news for years now, being one of the few greenfield 5G network operators entering saturated markets and, at the same time, radically reshaping how mobile networks are being designed, dimensioned, and deployed. Indeed, DISH Wireless has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host a large part of its network and the hyperscaler has written extensive articles highlighting how the networking stack has been designed from the ground up to combine both AWS infrastructure and servers deployed in the new network. Moreover, DISH Wireless is a strong supporter of Open RAN and aims to use open interfaces, disaggregated hardware, cloud-native, and software throughout its network.
Enhanced connectivity and broader coverage help drive economic growth and improve the quality of life for users. Unfortunately, in Africa, being connected to a mobile network is not a reality for everyone, although enormous strides have been made in recent years. To this day, 1 in 5 people living in Sub-Saharan Africa still does not have mobile broadband coverage—more than 200 million people. Penetrating the African content is something many Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) like Vodacom are working hard on, considering the enormous population that resides there. But there are some unique characteristics of Africa that must be considered before reaching out to its customer base.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic putting a strain on capital expenditure (CAPEX) in many industries, 5G investments were largely spared, as countries like China and South Korea go all-in with 5G rollouts. In ABI Research’s latest 5G market forecast for the years 2022 to 2027, it’s clear that adoption is destined for rapid growth and will shift from a minuscule slice of the network market to the largest network by 2026. Moreover, market data from some other reports, such as a 5G Advanced whitepaper and the IoT Tracker: 5G report—add more credence to the notion that 5G is rapidly overtaking 4G/LTE. In this post, we take a closer look at the 5G market forecast with eight eye-opening stats that every service provider needs to know to plan for success.
There’s nothing more fascinating than uncovering the development of certain technologies and how these came to be in today’s form. Cellular standards are no stranger to politics, lobbying, intense competition, patent disputes, and many other commercial rivalries. The choice of technologies in The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is one of these contested domains, where companies compete to promote their own technology choices, giving them a significant competitive advantage when they have a strong patent portfolio in the area. Channel coding is one of those areas, where interesting developments took place with 5G.
Investors and shareholders are increasingly losing their patience with telcos, which have promised that their enterprise revenue will soon overtake their consumer business. At the same time, enterprise end users are not yet convinced that today’s 5G can address their pressing key pain points in line with the IMT-2020 vision most 5G suppliers are preaching.
The first article in this series discussed why telco operators need to reinvent themselves. In short, there are significant opportunities in both consumer and enterprise domains, but operators need to transform their platforms to address these new opportunities in an increasingly competitive environment. Despite the entry of hyperscalers in the telco domain, telco operators have the experience, physical assets, and technology expertise that no other entity has in the market. For example, current 5G cell sites are set up to transfer more than 200 Terabytes (TB) per day, a monumental feat considering any network, let alone wireless. In the fixed broadband space, connections transfer TB worth of data every day for consumers, especially if we consider 4K content and immersive applications. These require significant expertise that only telco operators possess.