With MWC Barcelona set to take place at the Fira Gran Via next week, Ariana Lynn, Principal Analyst at The Fast Mode spoke to Brian Murray, Head of Product Marketing at Anritsu on the company's participation at the event.
Ariana: What are some of the key themes of this year's MWC?
Brian: Anritsu Service Assurance, a provider of automated assurance solutions to help operators manage and assure subscribers and services across complex networks, is dedicated to helping communications service providers (CSPs) embrace the future of service assurance.
Research conducted by Market Research Future, predicts that by 2030, the service assurance market is expected to expand at 9.3 percent CAGR, reaching a market size of 13.2 billion.
At MWC, Anritsu will focus on how service assurance is evolving from a supportive function to a central component in the dynamic networks of the future.
Fundamental to this transition is service assurance’s ability to:
- Play an integral role in maintaining the high performance, quality, and reliability demanded by next-generation networks.
- Unlock the full potential of private networks, where partner collaboration will be critical in bringing innovative uses of service assurance to operators.
- Embrace cloud-native networks, specifically using generative AI (GenAI) to develop targeted use cases that reduce operational costs and provide a seamless transition into future networks.
Ariana: What are some of the events that Anritsu has lined up? Any showcases?
Brian: Nicolas Timothee, Director of Strategy, CTO Office; Marco Gatti, 5G Product and Solution Manager, and Matthew Twomey, Head of Marketing will showcase how Anritsu Service Assurance is perfectly positioned to address CSPs needs as they undergo transformative network changes.
- Anritsu will showcase how it is using GenAI built upon our unique real-time anomaly detection data, delivering new persona-based insights to stakeholders in the Operators at Stand D41 in Hall 5
- Private networks are set to play a crucial role in the future of telecommunications, offering tailored solutions for specific enterprises. At MWC, Anritsu will showcase the tools they are providing that will enable operators to maximise the capabilities of private networks
- Anritsu will also highlight some key use cases from the Innovation Labs in Anritsu, with Sentiment Analytics linking an ecosystem of partners to the network-based data for richer insights, and cost-optimised visibility.
At MWC, the Anritsu team will demo:
- GenAI for Operations
- 5G Standalone
- Sentiment Analytics
- Cloud Native
- Private Native
Ariana: What's the outlook for telecoms, specifically the mobile industry in the next 12 months?
Brian: While the figures are hard to confirm, as of H1 2023 it is estimated that just a few hundred networks offered commercial 5G services, and only about one-fifth were 5G SA offerings. Now, a year later, the business cases behind a 5G SA network based on the enhanced capabilities touted for 5G SA have yet to fully materialise or be adequately proven.
The inability of 5G SA to gain wider adoption can be traced to three key obstacles that operators will need to overcome for 5G SA to reach its full potential:
- Lack of 5G SA devices: Use of some 5G SA benefits such as network slicing, requires the availability of compatible mobile and internet of things (IoT) devices. A combination of chip supply issues and the slow pace that manufacturers are introducing new devices has created dependent conditions, which will only intensify as private networks become more pervasive.
- Lack of monetisable use cases: Given that 5G SA was sold based on eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC, initial use cases didn’t meet expectations. For example, low-latency cloud gaming doesn’t appear to have broad appeal, Industry 4.0 is still finding its niche, and Vehicle to Everything (V2X) is still in its infancy.
- Lack of a clear consumer business case: In many cases 5G was marketed to the masses prematurely, and in some cases even before 5G NSA was available. Early adopters had high expectations, some of which were not met. Operators will need to determine whether their target market is with consumers or B2B, and what will appeal to this market.
While there are hurdles to overcome, 5G SA allows operators to improve work practices and workflows and embrace the concepts of Cloud Native, AI, and automation. Here in Anritsu, we are at the edge of this network upgrade, because as soon as an Operator needs to launch 5G SA, it will need to monitor 5G SA as you can only monetize what you can monitor. We are working with all the major network software vendors on data acquisition and visibility solutions in this updated landscape, so we do see an exciting number of years ahead. 5G SA may not have landed with a bang. But it is still coming and Operators who haven’t already need to prepare.
