New Report Predicts 5G Deployment Trends 2018-2025

Bristol, UK, Nov. 22, 2018 — With the onset of 5G world, vendors are emphasizing new business models and trying to enable them but operator spending plans show they are more concerned about sustaining the growth curve on mobile broadband. According to RAN Research, the wireless research arm of Rethink Technology Research, this mismatch will show up in planned Capex expenditure and the order in which operators expect to deploy different aspects of 5G. It predicts that  early 5G will be all about consumer mobile broadband delivering high speed to the handset, and ignoring new business models.

The report concluded that while one year ago, over 50% of Tier 1 and 2 operators said they planned to de-ploy 5G ‘small cell-first’, now the consensus is that two-thirds of 5G sites deployed in the first two years of commercial roll-out will be macro.

It said fully commercial-grade platforms and open interfaces have not matured as quickly as expected, while many MNOs believe they have to deploy 5G earlier than they had once planned. This has led to a misalignment between the availability of virtualized systems, and the pace of 5G roll-out. While 84% of MNOs aim to deploy a 5G vRAN, only 24% believe they will do that in the first two years.

The report also said that early 5G will be all about consumer mobile broadband. RAN said in its 2018 survey, the top goal for first phase 5G deployment are cost-related – lower cost to deliver high speeds and high capacity mobile broadband, largely to support the enhancement of conventional use cases. In the same survey, conducted two years earlier, three of the top five commercial goals for 5G related to new revenue streams – in-creased enterprise and IoT business was the top driver, placed in their top three by 40%.