5G Deployment Trends to 2025

“While 84% of MNOs aim to deploy a 5G vRAN, only 24% believe they will do that in the first two years.” 

There are mounting tensions in the 5G world – on the one-hand vendors are emphasizing new business models, and trying to enable them, and on the other, operator spending plans, show they are more worried about sustaining the growth curve on mobile broadband.

This mismatch will show up in planned Capex expenditure and the order in which operators expect to deploy different aspects of 5G. Early 5G will be all about consumer mobile broadband delivering high speed to the handset, and ignoring new business models.

RAN Research has forecast 5G deployment trends to 2025 but at the simplest level, has forecast, capex spend on base stations – segmenting the spend between Macro cells and small cells, and the timing on that spend. The report anticipates a small capex peak in the near future, but then business as usual.

Densification plans are postponed. Previous spending surveys one year ago and two years ago, showed a very different set of priorities among MNOs – and now they are putting densification on the back burner, and instead focusing on mobile broadband. Surprisingly two-thirds of 5G sites deployed in the first two years of commercial roll-out will be macro.

MNOs are also putting back their plans for virtualization in the RAN, and because fully commercial-grade platforms and open interfaces have not matured as quickly as expected.

This conservatism will affect equipment purchases, with a greater emphasis on macrocells, complemented by 4G small cells, and a postponed investment, for many, in 5G densification.

Companies mentioned in this report:

NTT Docomo, Rakuten, Vodafone, Swisscom, Three UK, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Telecom Italia, Wind Tre, Iliad Italia, Telia Finland, Elisa, DNA, Telecom Infra Project, ORAN Alliance.

For more information contact:

Natalia Szczepanek
Client Relations and Marketing Manager
[email protected]
Office +44 (0)1179 257019