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Light Reading Network X Americas
May 21-23, 2024
Irving Convention Center at Las ColinasIrving, Texas

5G Standalone Coverage at Big 5G

Join us at Big 5G to attend Core Evolution, Telco Cloud and Programmable Telco sessions, running over 2 days. Hear from leading CSPs and providers to learn more about best practices and approaches in 5G SA, converged cloud core, slicing services, Core Network security, service assurance, cloud-native SDM and network APIs.

Launching a commercial, nationwide 5G Standalone network

Changing network economics with converged cloud core

Delivering commercial slicing services successfully, at scale

Developing a successful cloud transformation strategy

Bringing slicing to the US market

Ensuring a secure 5G Core architecture

End to end service assurance in the cloud era

Accelerating 5G with cloud-native Subscriber Data Management (SDM)

Will network APIs be the answer to new business value?

Ruth Brown

Principal Analyst

Heavy Reading

"The race is on to provide wide-area public 5G SA as operators seek to introduce the advanced network experiences and services enabled by the 5G core"

Ruth Brown is the Principal Analyst of Mobile Networks at Heavy Reading and serves as the Chair for Big 5G's Core Evolution Sessions.


While most operators started deploying a non-standalone (NSA) network when first building 5G...

all North American operators are fiercely competing to build and bring their 5G SA network and services to market asap (bar T-Mobile who was the first to launch).  With $680m spent globally on just packet core, this is not a market to ignore. As of October 2022, just 30 CSPs globally had launched 5G next-generation core for standalone (SA) architecture. As vendors continue to resolve platform issues, operators will seek to reskill their staff (or hire new ones) and launch 5G core over the next two years. 5G core remains a key component of the overall 5G network, and operators’ business cases will be strengthened as automation and orchestration tools mature. Omdia forecasts that another 25 will launch in 2023, including US powerhouses, Verizon and AT&T. 

Source: 2023 trends to watch: Core Networks 

5G core will enable new use cases and revenue

MNOs’ finances have also been under pressure for several years, but they must ensure they can build and operate this new platform in a timely manner. Deploying and operating the 5GC is complex and requires MNOs to upskill the workforce to better use software and automation tools. 

MNOs have significant opportunities available to them to leverage the 5GC. While some of these opportunities, such as mobile gaming and virtual reality (VR), target the consumer segment and can deliver some revenue uplift, most of the low-latency use cases will deliver benefits to the enterprise and business-to-business (B2B) segments.  

Source: Omdia’s Assessing MNOs 5G Core Migration Strategies 

Supporting Resources

2023 Trends to Watch: Core Networks

Mobile Infrastructure Market Tracker – 3Q22 Analysis

Assessing MNOs’ 5G Core Migration Strategies

Upcoming Digital Events Include


  • Service orchestration in multi-domain networks, webinar - March 8
  • The migration path to 5G core, webinar – March 22
  • 5G Core Digital SymposiumApril 20
  • Network slicing – towards fully-automated, digital customer experience and zero-touch operations, webinar – April 27
  • The Programmable Telco Digital Symposium – May 10
  • 5G Orchestration & Service Assurance, webinar – June 6 & 8
  • Intelligent automation and OSS/BSS transformation, webinar – September 21
  • Roaming and wholesale in a 5G era, webinar – November 22