Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent Communications, says the 5G revolution is just hitting its stride.
It’s hard not to think of 5G as the new kid on the block in mobile networks, but believe it or not, it’s officially middle-aged.
This year marks the midpoint of 5G’s planned 10-year lifecycle, and we’ve certainly seen some growing pains along the way.
If you were expecting the technology to sail quietly into its golden years, however, think again.
As 5G Standalone (5G SA) deployments accelerate, new use cases come into focus and new 5G-Advanced features take off, the next few years should be action-packed.
As a leading testing provider, Spirent conducted 415 engagements worldwide last year with 138 different customers, including telecoms, network equipment manufacturers (NEMs), chipset providers, device-makers and others. Based on this work, we can make one prediction with confidence: stakeholders have big plans for 5G’s second half. We recently published our 2025 5G Report detailing the state of the market and the key trends unfolding now.
Here are some of the highlights:
5G by the Numbers
The industry went into 2024 seeking significant 5G expansion, only to hit strong headwinds from macro-economic uncertainty and 5G SA technical complexity. But relatively sluggish growth last year obscures a deeper truth: 5G is the fastest growing mobile technology to date, reaching 1.6 billion subscriptions in just five years – two less than it took for 4G. And with hundreds of deployed commercial networks and 2.1 billion subscribers as of 2024, those numbers will continue to climb.
5G now covers more than 95% of the population in North America, China, Japan and much of Western Europe. 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) deployments, which represent a brand-new business for operators, already generate significant average revenue per user (~$46 in the United States, ~€32 in Western Europe). And more than 2,500 different 5G device types are now on the market, including devices supporting features like 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) – a prerequisite for several groundbreaking use cases.
Even more exciting than the raw numbers, however, is what all the behind-the-scenes testing reveals about where 5G is headed next.
Reading the Testing Tea Leaves
Last year we conducted more than 50 5G SA testing engagements with service providers, NEMs and hyperscalers.
Much of this work was not just basic functional testing but validating more advanced 5G capabilities. These included 5G Core readiness to handle millions of RedCap devices alongside traditional smartphones, new mission-critical push-to-talk (MCPTT) services, and IEEE Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) standards for private networks running precision-driven applications. These capabilities will be crucial for some of the biggest emerging monetization opportunities in 5G’s second half.
Many engagements also focused heavily on performance, security, resilience and lifecycle management. This kind of testing, especially focused on user experience, suggests we can expect accelerated 5G SA and 5G-Advanced rollouts this year. Recent testing includes:
- Automated continuous testing: As they prepare for cloud-native 5G Core networks and network functions (CNFs), multiple operators are augmenting continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with advanced automated testing to support seamless lifecycle management and agile lab-to-live deployment.
- Security and resilience testing: Multiple 5G vendors conducted stringent testing to verify that 5G CNFs can meet real-world resilience requirements. This included growing use of “chaos-based testing” to measure the performance of recovery mechanisms under network failures and other adverse conditions. Engagements also focused on validating 5G Core networks against expanded 3GPP Security Assurance (SCAS) specifications.
- Differentiating on quality: For advanced 5G use cases, operators aren’t just building out networks and then fine-tuning. They’re starting with the experience they want to deliver and working backwards from there. That includes testing new 5G SA and 5G-Advanced capabilities that can dramatically improve service quality, such as voice and video over 5G New Radio (VoNR/ViNR) and assisted GPS (A-GPS) for more accurate location-based services. Service providers are depending on these capabilities to differentiate commercial offerings in FWA, multi-access edge computing (MEC), and other emerging use cases. Some are drive-testing and conducting competitive nationwide benchmarking now.
Monetizing 5G
Much of the testing happening now will provide marked improvements in quality and resilience for almost every existing 5G use case. But stakeholders have bigger plans than that for 5G’s second half. We expect 5G to fuel a variety of evolving use cases in the coming years that will unlock revolutionary experiences for users and significant revenues for stakeholders. Some of the biggest emerging 5G opportunities include:
- Fixed wireless access: Despite its novelty, 5G FWA is already approaching 30 million global subscriptions, proving a viable alternative to cable and high-speed broadband offerings, especially in rural areas. There are now more than 160 FWA rollouts in more than 70 countries, generating average revenue per user (ARPU) approaching $50 per month. As FWA matures, look for operators to target multi-occupancy buildings like condos and offices, and upsell opportunities such as premium gaming tiers and enterprise services with guaranteed performance and availability under service-level agreements (SLAs).
- Private networks and the Internet of Things (IoT): Private 5G networks already represent a growing opportunity, but 3GPP Release 17 and 18 capabilities should accelerate adoption, especially for industrial, manufacturing, and military use cases. Enhanced location accuracy and TSN will enable advanced mobility management for drones and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. Meanwhile, RedCap will dramatically reduce costs and complexity for IoT device connectivity, reducing 5G NR module costs by 80 percent and power consumption by more than 30 percent. These savings should spur significant 5G growth in industrial networks, smart grids, and other large-scale deployments.
- Network APIs: Among the most exciting opportunities for 5G’s second half, service providers are laying the groundwork to give developers access to 5G networks and capabilities. By exposing advanced 5G capabilities like VoNR/ViNR, network slices, and enhanced positioning to a global pool of developers and innovators, we may well see an explosion of new experiences and business models. Even more prosaic early API use cases like number verification and SIM swap will generate nearly $9 billion by 2029, according to research firm Omdia.
Five years in, it seems that far from slowing down, the 5G revolution is just hitting its stride.
