Summary

"5G Commercialization: Technology and Competitive Vendor Landscape Assessment", is a thematic research report by GlobalData that gives an overview of the emerging 5G standard and the main market requirement trends worldwide with a competitive insight to players driving 5G deployment. Paving the way for deployment of 5G equipment beginning later in 2018, led by operators in Korea, Japan and the U.S., significant hardening of standards related to both radio and core innovations has taken place recently.

While pre-5G, pre-standards deployments have defined the 5G era thus far, significant hardening of standards related to both radio and core innovations has taken place recently. The new standard paves the way for deployment of true 5G radio equipment beginning later in 2018, across numerous spectrum bands, ranging from low-band frequencies to millimeter wave bands as high as 50 GHz. The 5G core may ultimately represent a more vexing challenge. The key to being able to adopt 5G-related features such as network slicing requires adoption of the Service-Based Architecture (SBA) for the 5G core. SBA represents a radical change in network design. The reference architecture for SBA is well-defined but the transition will be rocky.

The exponential increase in network complexity created by 5G will introduce massive complexity into operator networks. Operators will require a software-defined, integrated, end-to-end approach to network and service orchestration that can separate data plane and control plane requirements and integrate multiple IP and optical transport domains in addition to OSS, business support and cloud infrastructure components. There remains much work to be done to make this vision a reality, however, and vendors are still in the early stages of figuring out best practices in terms of how to handle myriad management and orchestration requirements.

The report is structured as follows -
- Section 1: The 5G Radio Access Network. This section discuses about newly developed 5G RAN standards with insights to market requirement behind 5G RAN deployment and explanation to available and emerging 5G RAN technologies. It also provides competitive study of incumbent as well as relatively new players or challengers operating in this segment.
- Section 2: The 5G Core. Here we discuses about newly developed 5G core standards with insights to market requirement behind 5G core deployment and explanation to available and emerging 5G core technologies. It also provides competitive study of incumbent as well as relatively new players or challengers operating in this segment which is further sub-segmented into IP services infrastructure and evolved packet core.
- Section 3: Recommendations. We conclude the report with a set of key findings and critical considerations and recommendations for operators and vendors in 5G market.

Scope

- In the radio access network (RAN), the 3GPP, which defines cellular technologies and drives the process of implementing and updating standards, approved the first 5G radio standard, NR (“New Radio”). The new standard paves the way for deployment of true 5G radio equipment beginning later in 2018.
- Late 2018 will see the first early deployments of standards-based mobile 5G, led by operators in Korea, Japan and the U.S.
- The key to being able to adopt 5G-related features such as network slicing requires adoption of the Service-Based Architecture (SBA) for the 5G core. SBA represents a radical change in network design. The reference architecture for SBA is well-defined but the transition will be rocky. As a result, vendors are working with operators to enable a smooth transition to SBA-based 5G core.
- The exponential increase in network complexity created by 5G will introduce massive complexity into operator networks. Operators will require a software-defined, integrated, end-to-end approach to network and service orchestration that can separate data plane and control plane requirements and integrate multiple IP and optical transport domains in addition to OSS, business support and cloud infrastructure components.

Reasons to buy

- This report provides a global view of emerging standards for deploying 5G RAN as well as core network and trends in terms of market requirements, as well as competitive study of vendors/operators supporting 5G network deployment.
- This analysis is useful for telecom executives to evaluate their position vis-à-vis the major growth opportunities in 5G and make informed decisions about partner identification, strategic investments, value proposition and growth strategies to rapidly grow their 5G networks.

Companies Mentioned

Affirmed Networks
Altiostar
ASOCS
Athonet
Cisco
Connectum
Core Network Dynamics
DAS/Corning
Ericsson
ExteNet
Hitachi
Huawei
Mavenir
NEC/Netcracker
Nokia
Radisys
Samsung
SpiderCloud
Vmware
ZTE