Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy at Spirent

Prediction: 2024: A Crucial Year for Speeding Up 5G Standalone and 5G Core Deployments

The year 2024 is predicted to be a turning point for accelerating 5G Standalone (5G SA) and 5G Core deployments. The telecom industry has long anticipated the transition to fully fledged 5G SA networks, which presents significant technical challenges due to the need to deploy and integrate new, cloud-native 5G Core technologies. However, this year, we expect the market to gain momentum. This shift is due to the alignment of supply and demand for new 5G SA capabilities and the necessary equipment and devices.

On the supply side, there has been an influx of new suppliers introducing 5G SA products. This includes over 17 network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and more than 80 5G SA modems and chipsets available for end devices. Furthermore, over 1,400 device types on the market now support 5G SA. Companies like Spirent are witnessing a surge in testing from customers preparing to launch premium 5G SA services, including Voice over 5G New Radio (VoNR), network slicing, and low latency solutions for industrial applications. Consequently, the number of telecom networks supporting these services is also increasing. We anticipate that over 100 5G SA networks will be commercially deployed by early 2025.

Suppliers are ready to scale up to meet the growing demands of the 5G market. The demand for next-generation 5G SA capabilities has officially begun to increase. Specifically, customer demand is high in three key areas:

  1. Enterprise Private Networks requiring 5G SA capabilities such as guaranteed throughput and availability, low latency, and security.
  2. Gaming and Extended Reality (XR) applications that necessitate consistent throughput and very low latency.
  3. Government/Military Applications, particularly in remote areas that require secure, reliable connectivity.

The demand for 5G SA is projected to continue growing throughout 2024, driven by these use cases. However, it's not expected that there will be an immediate surge in new 5G SA deployments. Instead, a controlled growth strategy is anticipated, with customers starting with smaller initial deployments and gradually scaling up over the following years.

Go to the next page to see predictions from TTP for satellite connectivity.