Standalone 5G gets ready in the MEA region

In the Middle East & Africa, 94% of telecom service providers expect to have completed the transition to 5G standalone networks by the end of 2023, compared with 90% of the European respondents, and 86% of respondents in Asia, according to an IDG survey of global service providers, conducted on behalf of F5. 

“The technical challenges identified by mobile operators point to the complexities involved in running very versatile 5G networks based on IT technologies in parallel with more traditional 4G architectures,” said Bart Salaets, Senior Director of Solutions Engineering at F5.

He added, “Although these challenges are surmountable, it is critical that mobile operators fully consider the security and interoperability ramifications of adopting cloud-native 5G architectures.”

However, how widespread the ensuing 5G services would be offered remains to be seen. The impact of Covid-19, the recession, and geopolitical maneuvering will undoubtedly have an impact on these goals.

The Middle East and Africa region had the greatest percentage of respondents (55%) who said their organization’s current mobile network is 4G with a transition to 5G non-standalone (NSA) operational. However, a far higher majority of UAE respondents (60%) chose 4G with Ongoing Transition to 5G NSA as their present status, while 47% said their network was 4G and 5G NSA Operational.

According to the poll, over half of all mobile operators in the world are either deploying or developing a standalone 5G network.

Almost all 5G operators now use non-standalone networks, meaning they do not have a dedicated 5G core. However, standalone networks are on the rise: 18% of network operators polled at the end of 2020 had deployed a standalone 5G core, with a further 29% planning to do so.

In terms of architectural preferences for a 5G rollout, MEA operators are more likely to be significantly reliant on a single provider (82 percent), and far less likely to deploy best-of-breed equipment and software from a variety of suppliers (only 18 percent ).

Vertical stacks acquired from a single vendor (the preferred option of 73 percent of operators worldwide) were clearly preferred over a horizontal, best-of-breed strategy (23 percent ). European respondents echoed this division.

Respondents identified three key technical challenges in ensuring a smooth transition from 4G to 5G: the need for a unified security policy across 4G and 5G; signaling and internetworking between new and legacy networks; and the challenge of inducing virtual network functions (VNFs) to work successfully alongside cloud-native functions (CNFs).

Respondents in every location – albeit by slightly different margins – named the same three concerns as the most pressing. However, European operators highlighted the difficulty of harmonizing security policies across 4G and 5G networks (61 percent said it was the most critical), followed by 4G/5G internetworking (53 percent ) and VNF/CNF coexistence (53%).