5G at half-time

Spirent Communications has released its sixth annual 5G Outlook Report, based on analysis and takeaways from 415 new 5G engagements globally in 2024. With the 5G era now at its midpoint, the latest Spirent report also looks at progress made during the first five years of 5G, and highlights some of the key tactics being prioritized to grow revenues and opportunities in the second half of 5G’s implementation. The report, It’s Halftime for 5G: Progress, Key Plays and Future Prospects is available to download here: www.spirent.com/5Greport.

“Early revenue expectations for 5G were tempered following deployment and availability challenges during the first half of the 5G era,” says Spirent’s Head of Market Strategy, Steve Douglas. “But as 5G Standalone (SA) deployments continue to grow and 5G-Advanced starts to take off, telecom is poised to deliver the true capabilities of 5G that meet industry needs. Notable early successes like 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) underscore long-term opportunity, and entering the second half of the 5G era, there’s everything to play for as 5G services present a pathway to monetization with a range of other technologies combining to comprise a strong foundation for sustainable growth.”

Spirent worked with more than 50 service providers (CSPs), network equipment manufacturers (NEMs), and hyperscalers on 5G SA and 5G-Advanced testing in 2024. Key drivers spanned performance, security, resilience, lifecycle management, customer experience and service-based testing, serving as encouraging indicators of accelerated deployments in 2025.

Key takeaways from the report include:

• 5G SA and 5G-Advanced testing are encouraging indicators for acceleration in 2025. The testing efforts undertaken during 2024 by global telecom stakeholders underscore the priorities for future 5G networks. Spirent had over 50 unique 5G SA customer engagements and 30 of those were network operators, with many expected to go commercially live in the next 12-18 months.

• 5G Cloud-Native Core is the catalyst for automation and lifecycle management initiatives. Demand grew for automated continuous testing (CT) integrated into Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline processes which is foundational for seamless lifecycle management and agile lab-to-live delivery.

• 5G Security and Resilience is a growing focus for 5G SA commercial deployments. Customers put increased focus on validating the security and resilience of cloud-native functions (CNFs). This helped service providers build confidence that 5G SA will be able to handle complex, real-world demands and deliver service continuity.

• Customer Experience is critical for driving revenue growth. Spirent saw increased demand for quality of experience (QoE) testing and competitive benchmarking for key service offerings, including 5G FWA, in-home Wi-Fi, Voice over New Radio (VoNR), gaming, and multi-access edge computing (MEC).

• 5G Services provide pathways to monetization. There was increased emphasis on validating advanced capabilities and use cases including 5G reduced-capability (5G RedCap) for IoT, 5G roaming, Mission Critical Push-to-Talk (MCPTT) services, time-sensitive networking (TSN) in private networks, and security slices.

• IP-Transport Network is foundational for long-term success. Growing attention on IP-core upgrades to 400G, higher capacities to edge locations, and the introduction of Segment Routing (SRv6) as operators prepare for differentiated 5G offerings and the impact and monetization opportunity AI brings to their network.

• 5G SA device and handset service experience testing engagements highlighted the increased focus on the performance and experience of new services around immersive voice, video and video-chat as operators look to launch new consumer and enterprise private network offerings.

The report notes emerging and future star players likely to influence the second half of the 5G era, including 5G FWA expansion towards enterprises and urban markets; 5G low-altitude economy and non-terrestrial networks (NTNs); the role of AI in telecommunications networks; augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) assisted video; and 6G early focus and projected timelines.