5G Factor: 2023 Winners, 2024 Peek

An Assessment of Key 5G-IoT Ecosystem Developments including Open RAN Prospects, Smartphone’s New Lead Role in Mobile Shopping, and 6CA Progress In this episode of The 5G Factor, our series that focuses on all things 5G, the IoT, and the ecosystem as a whole, The Futurum Group's Ron Westfall is joined by colleague and fellow analyst, Todd R. Weiss, for a look at the top 5G developments and what’s going on that caught their eye including the 2023 Open RAN winners and delve into 2024 prospects including Vodafone and DT’s plans, Adobe Analytics declaring smartphones the new champion of mobile shopping in the holiday 2023 season, and T-Mobile, Ericsson, and Qualcomm kicking 2024 off with a breakthrough six-carrier aggregation (6CA) test that can deliver improved performance and spectral efficiency across the T-Mobile network in providing a greater 5G user experience. Their conversation focused on: Open RAN Ends 2023 with a Flourish. Open RAN is still percolating as it makes progress across the 5G ecosystem, picking up pace in North American and Europe in 2023, and indications are that we should see further deployments of the technology in 2024. In December 2023, AT&T and Ericsson wowed the market with their $14 billion, 5-year Open RAN deal. Notably, Vodafone has been one of the more active operator advocates of Open RAN to date with more to come as the operator confirmed that it is on track with its goal to deploy 2,500 open RAN sites. DT said it plans to operate more than 3,000 O-RAN-compatible antenna sites by the end of 2026. We assess how Open RAN’s mobile ecosystem progress in 2023 and sets the table for tangible gains in 2024 and beyond. Adobe Analytics: Smartphones Lead 2023 Holiday Online Shopping. Adobe Analytics came out with a most interesting take on mobile shopping during the holiday season of 2023. Driven by people shopping on their smartphones, online holiday spending reached a record $221.1 billion over the 2023 holiday season. Mobile shopping surpassed desktop shopping for the first time as spending increased 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31, compared to the same time last year. Abode Analytics indicated that 51.1% of shoppers confirmed their deals through the smartphone, setting the pace for online purchases. Mobile made up 47.1% of holiday sales in 2022. We explore why the breakthrough of smartphone online shopping represents an event horizon for why retailers need to give top priority to optimizing the smartphone shopping experience.   T-Mobile Pushes Speed Limits with Breakthrough 6CA Test: T-Mobile unveiled its first six-carrier aggregation (6CA), also described as six-component carrier aggregation (6CC), call using sub-6 GHz spectrum on its live production 5G network, describing it as a world first. Collaborating with Ericsson and Qualcomm, T-Mobile reached remarkable speeds above 3.6 Gbps in the test – fast enough, for instance, to download a two-hour HD movie in less than 7 seconds. This follows on T-Mobile announcing in May of 2023 that it was rolling out four component-carrier aggregation across its 5G Standalone network, which it stressed can achieve peak speeds of 3.3 Gbps. We assess why the 6CA milestone can deliver improved performance and spectral efficiency across the T-Mobile network in providing a greater 5G user experience.   Open RAN, RAN, 5G, 5G SA, 5G Advanced, cloud O-RAN, smartphone, analytics, mobile shopping, 6CA, 6CC, carrier aggregation, Vodafone, Ericsson, AT&T, Nokia, Adobe, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, Deutsche Telekom AG (DT), 1&1