With sub-6 GHz 5G deployments in a mature markets scaling rapidly–that’s to say nothing of a mixed bag of consumer interest–operators are now looking to bring the full 5G feature set to market through a transition from non-standalone to standalone 5G. Standalone 5G refers to a shiny, new, cloud-native core capable of offering up network slices, a key part of offering differentiated enterprise services and the new revenue that comes with that.
On the company’s most recent earnings call, Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm noted “strong demand for our cloud-native and 5G core portfolio” with “significant Tier 1 customers.” He expects to see revenue off those deals next year and said the vendor was going to up its R&D spend.
