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FWA remains the dominant 5G use case

Communication service providers (CSPs) in many countries (developed and developing) globally will leverage 5G FWA to provide competitive high-speed broadband services. CSPs increasingly view 5G FWA as a viable and, in many cases, more cost-effective alternative to traditional fixed broadband services. In many cases, FWA also provides CSPs with a time-to-market advantage versus traditional, fixed-access operators in greenfield environments such as rural areas. According to the June 2025 Ericsson Mobility Report 141 CSPs globally are currently offering 5G FWA services, up from 128 CSPs offering 5G FWA services a year ago.

FWA connection growth will remain robust in the U.S. as T-Mobile and Verizon expect to reach a total of 12 million and up to 9 million customers, respectively, by the end of 2028. FWA development in the U.S. will be aided by factors including new rules for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program that are more favorable to FWA as well as the establishment of an 800MHz pipeline of midband spectrum under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will create more capacity to support FWA.

Other regions are experiencing significant growth in FWA customers, including Europe and the Middle East and Africa. India is also a prime market for FWA due to its limited broadband infrastructure as Reliance Jio reached 5.6 million 5G FWA connections as of March 2025 and aims to add 1 million new 5G FWA connections monthly.

Investments in 6G are likely to be muted due to uncertain ROI

TBR expects CSPs will be reluctant to invest in large-scale 6G infrastructure deployments when the time comes because they are still struggling to generate a ROI on their 5G investments. CSPs will be focused on monetizing existing 5G investments into the 6G cycle as clear use cases and tangible ROI will need to be evident before 6G is deployed at scale.

The above sentiments were captured by a joint statement issued by the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance, a consortium comprised of about 20 global operators as of August. The document includes statements such as the following: “6G standards must be globally harmonised. It is expected to be built upon the features and capabilities introduced with 5G, alongside new capabilities to deliver new services and value. Such technological evolutions should be assessed with respect to their benefits versus their associated impact. 6G standards must learn from the mistakes of 5G, including multiple architecture options, features that are never used and use cases that have no market pull. … The industry needs to develop solutions that have tangible pull from potential customers, as there is increasing concern from operators about the affordability of investment in networks for the sake of technology development.”

TBR believes enterprises are likely to lead in 6G adoption over CSPs as they have more use cases to justify 6G investment, especially in regard to private networks in areas including manufacturing and heavy automation facilities. TBR expects the level of government involvement in the cellular networks domain (via stimulus, R&D support, purchases of 6G solutions and other market-influencing mechanisms) to significantly increase and broaden, as 6G has been short-listed as a technology of national strategic importance.

The commercial deployment of 6G-branded networks will likely begin around 2030 (following the ratification of 3GPP Release 21 standards, which is tentatively slated to be completed by the end of 2028). However, it remains to be seen whether 6G will be a brand only or a legitimate set of truly differentiated features and capabilities that bring broad and significant value to CSPs and the global economy. Either way, the scope of CSPs’ challenges is growing, and governments will need to get involved in a much bigger way to ensure their countries continue to innovate and adopt technologies deemed strategically important.

Global CSP spend on 5G infrastructure is growing slowly following a dip in 2024 as CSPs reassess their capital allocation and become more conservative

A pull forward of capex into 2023 in the U.S. and India resulted in a decline in CSP 5G capex in 2024, but slow growth will resume in 2025 as CSPs gradually deploy additional 5G base stations for coverage and capacity as well as roll out 5G SA and 5G-Advanced technologies.

Though some CSPs will continue to test and commercially deploy the newest technologies for 5G, most CSPs are in no rush to deploy 5G SA or 5G-Advanced due to the lack of ROI-positive B2B use cases.

FWA is one key area that will receive increased attention and investment through the forecast period as more CSPs legitimize the technology as an economically viable means of bridging the digital divide and bringing more competitive broadband services to existing markets that have fixed access.

 

Operators remain slow in their transition to 5G SA, which is limiting revenue opportunities provided by areas including network slicing and 5G-Advanced

A continued lack of 5G SA deployments globally is a main barrier preventing the telecom industry from capturing new areas of value for their networks, such as B2B opportunities, network slicing and network APIs. However, many CSPs are hesitant to migrate to 5G SA due to uncertainty around ROI. According to the June 2025 Ericsson Mobility Report, out of the over 340 CSPs globally that have commercially launched 5G, only around 70, or about 21%, have commercially launched 5G SA so far.

Many CSPs are not in a rush to deploy 5G SA and are comfortable keeping their 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) networks for an extended period. Though 5G SA does provide some optimization benefits, such as throughput improvements to support data traffic increases, versus the NSA framework, many CSPs remain content with 5G NSA pending substantial, ROI-positive use cases that require the technology.

Limited 5G SA adoption will likewise hamper CSPs in implementing 5G-Advanced, which is dependent on 5G SA. Early deployments of 5G-Advanced began in 2024 and gradually expanded in 2025. 5G-Advanced will provide CSPs with benefits including faster data speeds, reduced latency and the ability to support use cases in areas such as AR/VR, edge computing and IoT.

TBR Spotlight Reports represent an excerpt of TBR’s full subscription research. Full reports and the complete data sets that underpin benchmarks, market forecasts and ecosystem reports are available as part of TBR’s subscription service. Click here to receive all new Spotlight Reports in your inbox.

Persistent TIS revenue contraction will cease in 2025 as growth catalysts emerge

While TIS revenue continued to shrink among the vast majority of benchmarked vendors, TIS operating margins continue to recover as the business mix becomes more favorable and India’s coverage builds wind down

Aggregate telecom infrastructure services (TIS) revenue among benchmarked vendors declined 4.8% year-to-year in 2Q24, falling across all segments and regions. All but six vendors saw TIS revenue decline year-to-year in 2Q24. Several vendors, including Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and Ciena, are seeing sharply lower revenue in India as 5G RAN rollouts by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have gone post-peak. This will create difficult comparisons for vendors through at least 3Q24. Huawei and ZTE are also seeing their maintenance revenue in India evaporate as their installed bases of LTE and optical equipment is replaced by trusted vendors.
 
Simultaneously, vendors such as Cisco, CommScope, Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia and Samsung continued to be hampered by U.S. Tier 1 communication service providers (CSPs) significantly reducing or shifting their capex budgets following a peak in spend in 2022. Lower spend on 5G RAN deployments in China, which also peaked in 2022, is impacting a narrow set of vendors, including China Communications Services (CCS), Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE, as new deployments in the country are focused on capacity enhancement, which is typically less intense from a TIS perspective.
 
The shift that is occurring as CSPs wind down their 5G coverage rollouts in the key countries of China, the U.S. and India and focus on densification is helping drive operating margin growth. Declining deployment activity, which tends to carry the lowest margins among TIS segments, in these markets — especially India — is helping to improve operating margin.
 
In 2Q24 deployment services constituted 17.7% of aggregate revenue, down 110 basis points year-to-year. Benchmarked vendors’ aggregate TIS operating margin increased year-to-year for the third consecutive quarter, following six consecutive quarters of declines. Aggregate operating margin grew from 10.8% in 2Q23 to 11.6% in 2Q24.
 
TBR attributes the increase in large part to a favorable revenue mix, with maintenance services growing to 34.1% of aggregate revenue, up 100 basis points year-to-year. The 5G gear vendors have built out in the aforementioned countries over the past few years is leading to follow-on support revenue.

With CSP 5G spend post-peak in India, the U.S. and China, RAN-centric vendors universally saw their TIS revenue decline in 2Q24

 

 
2Q24 Total Benchmarked Revenue for IaaS and PaaS (Source: TBR)India-based IT services firms Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (a Tier 1 supplier in 2Q24), Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Wipro are winning deals from CSPs to support their evolutions to digital service providers. These vendors are helping customers migrate network and IT applications to the cloud and implement new business models. These firms have recently been hampered in part by lower application integration spend as CSPs in key markets such as the U.S. and Europe adopted a cautious cash flow management posture and paused some digital transformation activity.
 
Like Tier 1 vendor Amdocs, Tier 2 vendor CSG is a SaaS-centric, primarily BSS-focused, company offering revenue management and digital monetization products in a scalable managed services model. CSG has expanded account share among key clients in the U.S. over the last several years — namely, cable operators Charter and Comcast — and abroad, particularly in APAC and with an unnamed client in CALA, where CSG is ramping up a relatively large BSS contract. CSG’s TIS revenue declined in 2Q24 due to lower revenue from an unnamed global telco in Europe.
 
Samsung has executed on significant 5G work for CSPs that are based primarily in the U.S., India, South Korea and Japan. Samsung’s TIS revenue declined year-to-year in 2Q24 due to slowing spend at Verizon, which is Samsung’s largest customer by revenue, as well as in India, where Samsung participated in 5G RAN rollouts for Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio, though at lower levels than Ericsson and Nokia.
 
Like RAN vendors in India, Ciena’s TIS revenue in the country declined significantly as 5G-adjacent projects wound down. Ciena offset this decline with strong software-related services revenue growth in developed countries.
 

 

Vendor SL&C revenues largely declined as large-scale 5G and greenfield rollouts wound down and new network business models and arrangements proliferated

Site location and construction (SL&C) work is often subcontracted to local vendors (such as CCS) with better access to resources in a given area. The SL&C market is in decline as temporary gains driven by 5G deployments in China and the U.S. as well as some greenfield deployments have concluded.
 
Pockets of growth include fiber rollouts for broadband access, backhaul and/or fronthaul, and the deployment of small cells. However, the relative volume of spend on these tasks is significantly lower than that for traditional SL&C for macro cell sites.
 
TBR has a negative long-term outlook for the SL&C market as CSPs shift their focus to adding incremental capacity to their existing macro sites, partially offset by growing CSP investment in small cell sites. This densification primarily consists of software upgrades and/or requires adding new radios to existing sites. CSP consolidation also weighs on the SL&C market.
 
New network architectures and business models, including network-sharing arrangements, neutral host providers, satellites to provide coverage for rural and/or remote locations, and third-party infrastructure owners such as tower companies increasingly owning cell sites and promoting the colocation of operator equipment, also reduce the need for net-new sites.

North America TIS revenue continued to decline in 2Q24, but at an improving rate as growth catalysts begin to emerge, including in Canada, where recent M&A and vRAN investments are driving growth

Benchmarked vendors logged a 1.4% year-to-year decrease in aggregate TIS revenue growth in North America in 2Q24, a dramatic improvement from an 8% decline in 1Q24 as year-to-year comparisons turned more favorable and Ericsson began to receive meaningful revenue from its Cloud RAN rollout for AT&T.
 
Still, revenues declined due to numerous factors, including Verizon’s and AT&T’s C-Band rollouts being post-peak as well as T-Mobile’s build-out of its 2.5GHz spectrum being post-peak. In addition, CSPs are awaiting government funding before expanding their fiber footprints, and DISH drastically reduced spending in 2H23 and 1H24 after it reached a key coverage milestone in June 2023 and it neared bankruptcy before receiving new funding in 2H24.
 
TIS spend in the region is positioned to grow in 2025 as comparisons become more favorable and CSPs focus on building out fiber access, including by leveraging the BEAD Program, through which CSPs will receive federal funds that are currently being disbursed to states to bring broadband to the unserved and underserved.
 
The BEAD Program has seen numerous delays and will likely run through the mid-2030s, later than the original 2028 time frame. The program will benefit a somewhat different slate of vendors compared to the midband 5G build-out, as fiber will be the primary technology deployed. Nokia will be one of the biggest beneficiaries due to its embrace of Build in America requirements. Ciena will also benefit, due in part to its 4Q22 acquisitions of Benu Networks and Tibit. Meanwhile, Ericsson and Samsung will have no role in BEAD-related fiber deployments, though they could participate in fixed wireless access (FWA) build-outs.
 
5G development continues in Canada through measures including builds in the 3.5GHz spectrum band, BCE’s capital investment acceleration program, Telus’ vRAN build leveraging HPE and Samsung, and the replacement of equipment from China-based vendors. Tier 2 operators in Canada are also advancing their 5G strategies.
 
Canada CSPs are focused on deploying fiber across their footprints and will expand 5G services to new spectrum bands, including the 3.8GHz band, which Bell Canada began deploying in 1H24. Rogers’ acquisition of Shaw Communications is also driving spend due to investment commitments made by the merged entity and Videotron, which acquired a piece of Shaw.