Telecom Companies are Bullish on 5G Growth

The news of Chinese companies China Mobile & Huawei installing 5G base station on Mount Everest at the height of 6,500 meters is surely a fodder for other companies to realize that COVID-19 hasn’t stalled the 5G market. A survey (Toward a More Secure 5G World) by Business Performance Innovation (BPI) and A10 Networks too reveals that mobile telecom industry is making rapid progress towards 5G, including increased network virtualization. Dave Murray, Director of Thought Leadership with BPI Network, says, “While COVID-19 may result in some short-term delays for operators, the pandemic ultimately demonstrates a global need for higher speed, higher capacity 5G networks and the applications and use case they enable.”

The survey also highlights that the operators are rethinking security in light of 5G network traffic, security investment they need to protect their networks & customers, dramatic increase in connected devices and new mission-critical use cases. Around 81 percent of the respondents feel that progress towards 5G is either rapid or in line with expectations, while 45 percent say their companies are moving rapidly towards commercial deployment, up from 26 percent a year earlier. 71 percent of these respondents will start 5G network build-outs within 18 months, including one-third by the end of 2020; 42 percent are actively planning for standalone 5G deployments. A staggering 95 percent respondents say virtualizing

Mobile operators globally need to proactively prepare for the demands of a new virtualized and secure 5G world

network functions is important to their 5G plans. A vast majority of participants say containers will be important to network development, but only seven percent are moving rapidly toward full-scale adoption.

However, heavy cost of network build-outs, network security, new technical skills & competencies and lack of 5G-enabled devices remain top challenges for the companies. Almost every respondent believe that security is important to planning for 5G networks, and expect 5G networks to increase security & reliability concerns.

“Mobile operators globally need to proactively prepare for the demands of a new virtualized and secure 5G world,” says Gunter Reiss, Worldwide Vice President of A10 Networks. “That means boosting security at key protection points like the mobile edge, deploying a cloud-native infrastructure, consolidating network functions, leveraging new CI/CD integrations and DevOps automation tools, and moving to an agile and hyperscale service-based architecture as much as possible. All of these improvements will pay dividends immediately with existing networks and move carriers closer to their ultimate goals for broader 5G adoption and the roll-out of new and innovative ultra-reliable low-latency use cases.”