5G Deployments Gaining Steam Worldwide: GSMA

5G is starting to take off, speakers said Wednesday during a Mobile World Live. Experts agreed 5G networks and services require a new approach to radio access network (RAN) planning and design. “All the pieces are starting to fall into place for 5G deployments,” said James Joiner, analyst-mobile operators and networks at GSMA Intelligence. So far, 56 countries have held 5G auctions, mostly for mid-band spectrum, with “activity picking up” in auctions for low- and high-band, he said. To date, 240 carriers across 106 markets have trialed 5G, with nearly 200 launches in 77 markets, he said. “We expect this momentum to continue over the next few years” with another 55 markets seeing 5G networks by the end of 2025, Joiner said. There are now an estimated 650 million 5G connections worldwide, which is almost 10% of mobile connections, he said. GSMA expects 5G connections to account for 25% of connections by the end of 2025 and more than half by 2030, he said. China, South Korea and the U.S. are leading the world, he said. Providers are finding it “more and more difficult” to find the expertise they need to manage their networks, said Regis Lerbour, vice president-product and R&D at Infovista, a network optimization company. Optimizing investments in 5G requires a combination of more accuracy and more efficiency, he said. “There’s no point in becoming more efficient if you’re not as accurate as you can be,” he said. Network planning needs to be based on “real-live data from their network,” he said. Automation of the RAN can make managing it more efficient, Lerbour said: “You don’t always need your engineers involved and running standard workloads when they could be working on real problems in the network.”