5G: Its now or Never for Vendors

Despite all the criticism and hype, 5G is finally here. Leading CSPs in North America & South Korea has already launched their services in multiple cities and many other are planning world wide. Even though the ROI and monetization is not concrete enough to realize, Telcos are being pushed to go for a try. In next 2 years, we could see significant large scale deployments of 5G across the globe.

Many Telco vendors are still holding their cards and due to the uncertainty of business outcomes and immediate revenue realization, they are in a dilemma whether they should go for the 5G ready network elements and solutions or not. Since 5G is a major technological and architectural shift from its predecessor (LTE), it demands a huge investment and a significant time to build up the  next gen mobile network solutions, it becomes important for Telco vendors to realize the ROI and the timeline, by when they could expect the large scale deployments.

Although, many of the leading CSPs like Verizon, AT&T, KT, CM etc. are deploying their next gen Radio solutions in NSA (EPC Assisted) mode, the speed of deployment is slower. Currently, they (CSPs) are focusing mainly on eMBB(Gigabit Mobile Internet) as one of the use case for delivering their  5G services and hence the target segment is mainly retail, which may not seems promising to many new-gen Telco-Vendors, especially those, who are mainly into the OSS and BSS solutions.

Based on the recent analysis done by TMF, the adoption rate will rise 2X for 5G over the next half decade(2020-2025). This clearly shows, why this is the right time for Telco vendors to start working on their 5G ready solutions, not only the Network-Equipment part, but also the BSS and OSS solutions.

" CSPs will need the monetization capabilities to realize more revenue form the services provided by their network-equipment and infrastructure and hence a robust, reliable and innovative OSS/BSS solutions will be required to minimize the cost and earn more revenue form their network solutions and services.
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Many Telco giant vendors like Ericsson, Nokia and Cisco are mainly focusing on the 5G-Radio and 5G-Core Network Functions and solutions, while there are some new players like Affirmed Networks who are working on new 5G solutions like Network Slicing. Still there are very few who are actually working on the next gen BSS/OSS platform, which will be the key to monetize the overall 5G investment. Especially European Telcos like Orange, DT etc. are more interested in next-gen ODA (Open Digital Architecture) over the 5G network elements and this gives a chance for innovative BSS/OSS vendors to start now building the ODA based BSS/OSS solutions, which can earn them early business with leading CSPs, not only in Europe, but later in other parts of the world as well.

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No matter, how desperate the CSPs are to get their 5G-NR deployed, but they will not be able to monetize it if they lack of the innovative monetization solutions.
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Conclusion:
Telco-Vendor giants are mainly focusing on the New-Radio(gNB) and the User-Plan 5G-Core equipments(UPF), this gives an opportunity to the OSS/BSS vendors to start building their innovative monetization solutions and cloud native Digital-Platforms, in order to earn early 5G business, which will not only help them to realize the early revenue, but CSPs will also get more than they are investing in 5G transformation. And the key to earn early 5G business is to start now, as currently CSPs are also focusing on High capacity Radio and Packet core, but at a later stage(by end to 2019), they will need the  next-gen OSS/BSS, which will be the key for new players(telco-vendors)