Public Cloud 5G Workloads to Grow at 88 percent CAGR, $4.6B over Five Years

A brand new report, “5G Workloads Moving to the Public Cloud” by Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, networks and data center industries, projects that 5G workloads on the public cloud will grow revenues at an 88 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) and cumulative revenues are estimated at $4.6 billion over the five-year forecast period 2022-2026. The report finds that the vast majority of 5G SA networks will be in the Telco Cloud, limiting the short-term opportunity for the Public Cloud to host 5G workloads.

“At first glance, this may appear to be a very conservative forecast. Especially in view of hyperscale cloud providers’ (HCPs) plethora of press releases that suggest there is greater traction in the marketplace than previously identified. The new report discovers that the opportunity for HCPs to penetrate the Telco Cloud market is very limited in the short-term, with the momentum already established by mobile network operators (MNOs) committing to the Telco Cloud,” stated Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “Most of the HCP press releases are about HCPs adding network solutions for Enterprises that desire 5G device connectivity via a Hybrid Cloud at the edge location. Our projections are for Public Cloud revenues, not Hybrid Clouds at the edge of the networks.

“We found that 27 5G SA networks have been commercially deployed and only one MNO is running its 5G workloads in the Public Cloud. The balance chose to run their own Telco Clouds. Further findings show that another 130 MNOs have already cut contracts with 5G Core vendors to deploy their own Telco Clouds, and two MNOs have committed to run their networks in the Public Cloud.

“As a result, for the short-term, HCPs are focusing on the enterprise opportunities extending their services to the network edge, either themselves or partnering with an MNO integrating their services inside the Telco Cloud. Longer term there is much more opportunity for the HCPs to host 5G workloads in their Public Clouds with 75 5G non-standalone (5G NSA) MNOs and another 600 LTE MNOs still to announce their 5G SA plans. The forecast exits 2026 with a higher year-over-year percentage growth rate for 5G workloads moving to the Public Cloud than for the growth rate of the Telco Cloud,” Bolan added.