At 5G’s midpoint, what’s in store for the second half?

By Steve Douglas / Spirent Communications

5G has dominated the mobile network conversation for so long now, so you might wonder if there’s anything left to say about the topic. Here’s a reality check: we’re just now reaching the midpoint of 5G’s planned 10-year lifecycle. If this were a football game, we’d just be hitting halftime. So, no matter what you think about what you’ve seen from 5G, there’s more to come—a lot more.

In our role providing testing solutions for telcos, hyperscalers, network equipment manufacturers (NEMs), and others in the mobile ecosystem, we get previews of coming attractions from the biggest stakeholders in this space. And we can report that momentum is far from waning as we move into 5G’s second half. If anything, it’s about to accelerate.

Last year, we conducted 415 5G testing engagements across 138 unique customers. Based on this work, here are some key trends to watch in the coming months, plus a sneak peek at even more groundbreaking innovations to expect in the next few years.

Evolving for complexity

5G Standalone (5G SA) deployments proceeded relatively slowly in 2024, largely thanks to macroeconomic headwinds and technical complexity. However, as we move into 5G’s second half, stakeholders are getting even more of its advanced capabilities ready for action.

First, some context: despite perceptions of sluggish expansion, 5G is the fastest-growing mobile technology to date, reaching 2.1 billion subscriptions in 2024. In North America, China, Japan, and much of Europe, 5G networks now cover at least 95% of the population, with other markets catching up quickly. Operators have opened new recurring revenue streams from services like 5G fixed wireless access (FWA), which is already generating global average revenue per user (ARPU) of $50.

Even for the most complex 5G implementations, testing indicates accelerating momentum. We worked with 50 operators in 2024, conducting 5G SA testing and validating new “5G-Advanced” features in 3GPP Release 17 and 18. Testing focused on things like:

·       5G Core readiness to handle millions of 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) devices alongside traditional smartphones—a foundational requirement for large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) deployments like Smart Cities and connected healthcare

·       5G mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) services to enable low-latency communications for use cases like railway operations, public safety, and energy

·       Time-sensitive networking (TSN) in private networks for precision applications like factory automation

Operators also validated 5G SA-powered Voice and Video over New Radio (VoNR/ViNR) services and more accurate location-based services with assisted GPS (A-GPS). These capabilities will bring immediate improvements in user quality of experience (QoE), and multiple telcos spent 2024 driving testing and benchmarking to ensure they’re ready for prime time.

The most exciting aspect of this work is that stakeholders weren’t just conducting basic functional testing of more advanced 5G features and use cases. They were focusing on user experience (performance, resilience), security, lifecycle management, and service-based testing. This suggests we should see real-world commercial services bring these capabilities to customers soon.

Scoping second-half action

All indications suggest that the 5G ecosystem is preparing to put on quite a show in the coming months and years. Top trends to watch in 2025 include:

· 5G FWA growth: Over the last few years, over 160 5G FWA rollouts have occurred across more than 70 countries. Operators have added more than 25 million global subscriptions and appear to be just scratching the surface of market potential. In 5G’s second half, look for operators to expand FWA offerings to markets like enterprises, multi-occupancy buildings, and edge computing.

· 5G RedCap adoption: In Release 17, RedCap provides a “5G light” alternative for use cases (like many IoT deployments) that don’t require a complete 5G  feature set. Among the 15 countries trialing or implementing RedCap in 2024, early deployments have exceeded expectations, reducing 5G module costs by 80% and power consumption by more than 30%. Look for significant RedCap investment, especially in China, where three of its largest operators have already deployed dongles and terminals for aggregating IoT sensors.

· Network architecture upgrades: As operators contend with nonstop 5G traffic growth and prepare for 5G SA, they’re beginning IP Core network refreshes. Central to this effort, many spent 2024 validating new 400G routing and switching solutions, which deliver a significant capacity boost while using less energy, in less rack space. Operators are also beefing up the IP Transport fabric to support higher capacity demands of 5G Radio Access Networks (RAN). Current testing focuses on 25G interfaces—a key requirement for the enhanced Common Public Radio Interface (eCPRI) protocol to support massive MIMO deployments—and 100G testing for edge aggregation sites.

Looking farther afield, as operators advance with 5G SA and later 3GPP releases, we anticipate even more groundbreaking innovations in 5G’s second half. These include:

· AI Network Infrastructure as a Service (NIaaS): Almost every organization is currently implementing an AI strategy, but many of them, especially smaller enterprises and governments, can’t meet the network performance requirements of AI applications. Over the next few years, look for operators to target these customers with 5G NIaaS offerings that combine ultra-low-latency, high-throughput connectivity with security, privacy, and data sovereignty at the edge.

· Non-terrestrial networks (NTN): Since Release 17, 3GPP has laid the groundwork for NTNs, integrating satellite and high-altitude communications with terrestrial networks. These capabilities will provide an immediate boost for industrial, government, and military sea and air use cases and consumer and enterprise customers in rural and remote areas. And that’s just a prelude for emerging use cases like drone-based delivery and real-time fleet management, which will constitute an entirely new “low-altitude economy” that Chinese regulators project will generate hundreds of billions in new revenues.