Communication Service Providers CSPs in developed markets accelerated 5G development in 2020 and 2021, with the technology accounting for 39% of overall wireless infrastructure revenue this year. “The COVID-19 pandemic spiked demand for optimized and ultrafast broadband connectivity to support work-from-home and bandwidth-hungry applications, such as streaming video, online gaming, and social media applications,” said Michael Porowski.

With the partnership, Google Cloud and Ericsson are also piloting enterprise applications at edge on a live network with TIM. The project, which will automate the functions of TIM’s core 5G network and cloud-based applications.

The rapid surge in demand owing to COVID-19, meant that communication service providers had to quickly expand their capabilities. As organisations have moved to a remote set up, the attack surface has also expanded and intensified. This meant that respondents had to invest heavily in security technologies to protect their networks. Likewise, demand has come from multiple and different locations.

“Organizations have a tremendous opportunity to digitally transform businesses with 5G and cloud capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning at edge. We are proud to partner with Ericsson to build a foundation for communications service providers and enterprises alike to take advantage of cloud technology and cloud-native services, from telecom network core to the edge and enterprise premises.”

From the concerns and priorities revealed by our research that service providers have customer experience and service resilience firmly at the top of their to-do list as customer expectations, their purchasing strategies and the network environment undergo pandemic-accelerated change. A thread running through many responses was the threat posed by DDoS attacks, with almost half of service providers.