Operators could possibly produce hundreds of billions of dollars each year in revenue from 5G services in the upcoming years, given that they concentrate on virtualization in the core. 

These are forecasts by Juniper Research, whose newest report puts international 5G service revenues at US$ 73 billion by the conclusion of 2021, an escalation on the $20 billion documented in the previous year when 5G services were really in their infancy, and representative of 8.5% in operator revenue. The figure will appreciate to over $600 billion by half-a-decade from now, but operators will require to prep their networks as data usage experiences growth. 

It’s the same conclusion the researcher came to in a similar report put out a year ago, albeit with differing figures. That probably indicates that operators have not experienced as much progression in virtualization as the analysts would have liked to observe in the previous 12 months. Admittedly, Juniper did not particularly make that point though. 

Provided the varying requirements of these 5G use cases, stated report writer David Bowie, making a reference to smartphone gaming and immersive reality services that will expand in usage over the next half-a-decade. “Network orchestration utilities that facilitate the real-time administration of network performance are critical to furnishing a service that meets the demand of 5G subscribers and facilitate operators to completely maximize 5G service revenue. 

Indeed, Juniper forecasts that operators “will encounter challenges in satisfying the mobile data demands stemming from 5G networks,” predicting an escalation in cellular data traffic produced by 5G connections to 1.5 billion Petabytes internationally in half a decade from now. More than 80% of 5G data can be attributed to mobile broadband connections. 

It did not furnish a comparative figure, nor is there a traffic figure in its precis of previous year’s report; but, the 2020 variant consists of a forecast that data-intensive 5G use cases will trigger overall cellular data traffic growth of 270% over the course of half a decade, which furnishes a good indicator of the magnitude of the problem. 

Concentrating their efforts on visualizing core network functions will assist operators tackle those traffic demands as they look to produce a return on the massive investments they have made into 5G so far. 

The ongoing 3.45 Ghz spectrum auction in the United States is one of several 5G frequency sales of the previous year or so that have compelled operators to part with their money. The present auction will not attain the dizzying heights of its C-band predecessor earlier on in this year – the running total came to $2.2 billion at the end of play on Tuesday, incidentally – but internationally telecom organizations are experiencing heavy expenditures on spectrum, not to specify equipment and rollout expenses. 

Thus, it makes a ton of logical sense for them to look to virtualization and automation to obtain the most out of those networks and furnish a good experience to the clients they hope will eventually pay more for 5G. 

On top of improving network virtualization and network orchestration efforts, Juniper suggests to telecoms to hasten the rollout of fibre backhaul infrastructure to minimize the threat of 5G traffic congestion. 

Fibre is not inexpensive, but neither is client dissatisfaction, and there are major investments that are upcoming.