The 5G-Advanced era: the importance of 5G’s evolution for the mobile core

For all its success, 5G has yet to fully deliver on one of its fundamental objectives: operator revenue growth and diversification. As an indication, global ARPU growth for operators was on par with inflation from the start of 2020 through to the end of 2023. Meanwhile, and not surprisingly, operators continue to focus on business growth, driven by new revenues and improved user experience.

Against this backdrop, the arrival of 5G-Advanced in 2024 promises to give operators a new tool for delivering innovative, revenue-enhancing services by meeting real-world requirements for consumers and enterprises. 

With the RAN dominating operator capex, most of the attention has been on 5G-Advanced RAN innovation. Core networks, however, will also need to evolve in the 5G-Advanced era. This includes performance enhancements to address new traffic and use cases; greater core network deployment distribution to support traffic and use case requirements; and deterministic performance support and embedded intelligence to manage the new era of 5G services and network infrastructure.