Expectations were high for a surge in 5G Standalone (5G SA) deployments in 2023, but the first half of the year produced only seven full launches.
STL Partners currently lists 30 additional 5G SA deployments as “in progress” on its tracker. In a recent report, the telecom research firm assessed how likely those deployments are to occur in 2023 and whether 5G SA remains a strategic priority for operators.
Industry watchers had expected a notable rise in 5G SA core rollouts in 2022, yet actual progress lagged behind those forecasts.
Although there were 21 launches of converged NSA/SA or pure 5G SA cores in 2022 (up from 18 in 2021), the January 2023 update to deployment tracking pushed several planned 2022 projects into the following year.
By mid-2023, only seven 5G SA core deployments had been completed, including launches by Reliance Jio in India, e& in the UAE, Vodafone in the UK, and Orange in Spain.
Are the remaining 30 deployments realistic?
With 30 pending 5G SA launches still scheduled for 2023, there is uncertainty about whether those plans can be realised within the remaining months. Some may be delayed into subsequent years or even cancelled, depending on shifting priorities and market conditions.
A September 2022 report titled “5G standalone (SA) core: Why and how telcos should keep going” identified several factors slowing 5G SA adoption:
- Investment challenges: The capital required to deploy 5G SA remains substantial, and in many markets a clear return on investment is not yet evident because the use cases that fully exploit 5G SA’s low latency, high bandwidth, and massive connection capabilities have not matured.
- Cloud partnerships: Operators are still defining strategies and partnerships with hyperscale cloud providers—deciding how public cloud platforms will host 5G SA infrastructure and how hyperscalers can accelerate network coverage.
- Competing investment priorities: Many leading operators are allocating funds to open RAN initiatives and fibre rollouts, which can delay 5G SA projects when budgets and resources are constrained.
- Organisational change: Fully realising 5G SA’s potential requires telcos to evolve their organisational structures and adopt cloud-native practices and operations, which takes time.
APAC is leading deployments
While progress has been uneven across regions, Asia-Pacific (APAC) stands out with 31 5G SA core deployments recorded to date.
These rollouts—driven by major operators in China, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—are focused mainly on consumer-facing services such as cloud gaming, AR/VR experiences, high-quality content streaming, and industrial IoT applications.
Government support, strong consumer demand, the potential for premium monetisation, and local ecosystems of device makers and app developers have all helped accelerate APAC deployments.
As the industry moves into the second half of 2023, attention will turn to whether the expected wave of deployments materialises and whether 5G SA maintains its strategic importance for operators worldwide.
(Photo by Craig Pattenaude on Unsplash)
See also: Qualcomm achieves record-breaking 5G downlink
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