Telecoms.com newly published survey report assesses the telecom industry’s performance over this year, as well as the views of the professionals participating in the survey on the outlook of 2023 and beyond. A general sense of optimism and achievement comes through as 63% of respondents believe that the business performance of telecoms in 2022 has been ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ while also reaching consensus on a positive outlook for next year.

Here are some of the key findings from the survey:

• More than two thirds view the industry’s business outlook for 2023 as positive, including about a third that believe the outlook to be very positive.
• Around two out of three respondents believe the industry’s performance in 2022 has been either excellent or good
• The majority of respondents believe 5G standalone (SA) core network will have a materially favorable effect on the adoption of 5G, but there remain many obstacles for deployment.
• Around one in three respondents report they have many service concepts to monetise as their capabilities evolve, but they find configuration and testing of services challenging.
• One in four respondents will upgrade existing BSS and charging stack to support new use cases for enterprise and B2B2X.
• Legacy infrastructure is considered the largest barrier to automated zero-touch services.
• Most respondents consider video delivery key for their telecom businesses, including more than a third who consider it a top priority.
• Healthcare and connected vehicles are the top two most interesting IoT use-cases.
• Nearly two thirds of respondents either plan to or have already deployed Open RAN commercially.

The survey report states that Security, Digital Transformation, IoT, and Broadband will be the top four areas for telecom businesses in 2023.  5G standalone core is identified as having a materially positive impact on the wider adoption of 5G. Nonetheless, high costs in network equipment and network deployment are still seen as the biggest key challenge for deploying standalone 5G.

Other challenges identified with  broadband network and service automation include legacy infrastructure and siloed operations across technologies. Lack of skills and resources is also flagged as a key barrier to the deployment of IoT and also Open RAN technologies.

In terms of emerging services and technologies, Metaverse is identified with 60% as the most hyped emerging technology while more than half of respondents also view it as ‘not commercially interesting’. Meanwhile, the survey reports that more than four in five telecom professionals find video delivery as key for telecom businesses, including a third who consider it ‘top priority’.

References:

Telecoms.com Annual Industry Survey 2022 Report

2022 has been a great year for telecoms, industry professionals say

https://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2022/12/Telecoms.com_Annual_Industry_Survey_2022_Final.pdf