ABI Research predicts that 75 percent of 5G networks will be upgraded to 5G-Advanced by 2030.
The global mobile network standards organization 3GPP approved Release-18—the first official release of the 5G-Advanced standard—in December 2021. A stage two functional freeze is scheduled for March 2023, followed by a stage three freeze in December 2023.
(Credit: 3GPP)
5G-Advanced represents the next major evolution of 5G. Networks that adopt 5G-Advanced will see improvements in mobility and reliability that support more demanding applications.
“In 5G-Advanced, Extended Reality (XR) applications will create monetization opportunities across consumer markets—such as gaming and video streaming—and in enterprise use cases like remote work and virtual training,” says Gu Zhang, 5G & Mobile Network Infrastructure Principal Analyst at ABI Research.
“For that reason, XR is a central focus for 3GPP working groups, which are working to improve XR-specific traffic performance and lower power consumption to enable mass-market adoption.”
According to Nokia, key enhancements in 5G-Advanced include improvements across radio access, core network capabilities, and support for new service classes that demand lower latency, higher reliability, and more efficient spectrum use.
“Another prominent development is the integration of AI and machine learning, which will be essential for future networks,” Zhang adds. “The rapid growth in 5G usage and the complexity of emerging use cases cannot be managed effectively by legacy optimization methods that rely on fixed models.”
“Energy efficiency at the system level is also critical. Operators must lower deployment and operating costs while ensuring network performance for a wide range of use cases.”
ABI Research expects consumer markets to adopt 5G-Advanced more rapidly than enterprise markets. Analysts estimate that the proportion of enterprise 5G networks upgraded to 5G-Advanced will be roughly half that of the consumer market.
The insights in this article are drawn from ABI Research’s 5G-Advanced and the Road to 6G report (paywall)
(Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash)
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