Dear Colleagues,

In the technology space, it’s vital that your organization stay on top of prevailing trends in your respective industry. This extends to keeping tabs on the competition or, if you’re seeking a solution provider, weighing your options. That’s why ABI Research released its 40 Technology Companies To Watch In 2023 whitepaper to better understand which tech firms are winning in terms of innovation and implementation of their technology products/software.  

Europe, being one of the most developed and affluent regions in the world, will play a key role in the widespread 5G rollout. Europe is at the forefront of smart cities, campus lab testing, sustainability, and telecommunications innovation, not to mention the consumers, manufacturers, and various industrial enterprises that seek an improved mobile experience and/or must run automated systems on a private network. Each of these applications, among many others, will use 5G coverage as the backbone for myriad use cases.

Sidelink is a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication technology that broadens Long Term Evolution (LTE)/5G network coverage. This technology has been around since The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 12 when it was used to enable basic vehicular communication (Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)) on LTE networks. Over the years, there have been incremental upgrades, such as Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) sidelink support in 3GPP Release 14 and 5G support in Release 15, among others. Then, 3GPP Release 16 introduced 5G New Radio (NR) support, which is highly beneficial for 5G users looking for deployment flexibility on-premises. Now we arrive at 3GPP Release 17 and Release 18 (5G Advanced), both of which are bound to challenge the way you think of sidelink. 

Like virtually every other industry, the telecommunications (telecom) industry has been affected by current macroeconomic and geopolitical trends (war in Europe, high inflation, global warming, etc.), causing doubt about the future of their enterprise. In some areas, the influence of these key telecom trends may not be as severe as you’d think, but in other areas, there are some radical departures taking place. To help operators and ecosystem players understand the effects of ongoing global challenges, and how to plan for the future, ABI Research has compiled some of the most important developments surrounding the telecoms sector.

DISH’s 5G Network Deployment Plans    

DISH Wireless has been in the forefront of the news for years now, being one of the few greenfield 5G network operators entering saturated markets and, at the same time, radically reshaping how mobile networks are being designed, dimensioned, and deployed. Indeed, DISH Wireless has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host a large part of its network and the hyperscaler has written extensive articles highlighting how the networking stack has been designed from the ground up to combine both AWS infrastructure and servers deployed in the new network. Moreover, DISH Wireless is a strong supporter of Open RAN and aims to use open interfaces, disaggregated hardware, cloud-native, and software throughout its network.

Intel and MediaTek this week announced a major new foundry partnership, in which MediaTek will manufacture chips targeting Internet of Things (IoT) and edge applications using Intel Foundry Services’ (IFS) advanced process technologies. This new strategic partnership is not only a significant win for both parties but will also have profound impacts on the global chipset supply chain and U.S. chipset ecosystem, significantly helping these industries in their efforts to delocalize manufacturing processes away from Asian (Chinese) dominance and closer to American Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

Update: ABI Research's 2025 forecasts for the 5G market can be read in our blog, Top Industries/Applications Driving 5G Market Growth from 2025 to 2030.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic putting a strain on capital expenditure (CAPEX) in many industries, 5G investments were largely spared, as countries like China and South Korea go all-in with 5G rollouts. In ABI Research’s latest 5G market forecast for the years 2022 to 2027, it’s clear that adoption is destined for rapid growth and will shift from a minuscule slice of the network market to the largest network by 2026. Moreover, market data from some other reports, such as a 5G Advanced whitepaper and the IoT Tracker: 5G report—add more credence to the notion that 5G is rapidly overtaking 4G/LTE. In this post, we take a closer look at the 5G market forecast with eight eye-opening stats that every service provider needs to know to plan for success.

There’s nothing more fascinating than uncovering the development of certain technologies and how these came to be in today’s form. Cellular standards are no stranger to politics, lobbying, intense competition, patent disputes, and many other commercial rivalries. The choice of technologies in The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is one of these contested domains, where companies compete to promote their own technology choices, giving them a significant competitive advantage when they have a strong patent portfolio in the area. Channel coding is one of those areas, where interesting developments took place with 5G.

Although Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) is far from being well-established, Communication Service Providers (CSPs), such as telco and infrastructure providers, need to plan their next moves now if they want a slice of the potential US$75 billion market. NaaS is the logical evolution of enterprise networking in a world that shows a preference for dematerialization and enhanced user experiences. In this post, we define what NaaS is, explain how it's changing the telecommunications industry, and list 6 of the top NaaS providers that are targeting enterprise customers.