Trends in the 5G market

In a study for the European Commission, experts from the AIT Center for Innovation Systems & Policy and the Center for Digital Safety & Security looked at trends in the market for 5G equipment and services.

"The aim of the project was to identify possible development scenarios of the 5G infrastructure market in order to enable an assessment of related opportunities and risks for Europe and to develop measures that can strengthen Europe's competitiveness," says project leader Michael Dinges (Center for Innovation Systems & Policy).

The study provides an in-depth analysis of future developments in the market for 5G equipment and services up to 2030. 8 key trends influencing the future development of the 5G supply market were identified through horizon scanning and an expert survey. Each trend represents a factor that has a large potential impact on the 5G provider market, but also a high degree of uncertainty regarding the ultimate outcome.

Based on this trend analysis, 4 possible scenarios were formed, driven by factors such as evolving technology, standards readiness and radio access network (RAN) component sharing initiatives. For each scenario, the economic, technological, environmental and societal impacts were analysed, taking into account the main concerns of the European Commission and stakeholders, including market competition, costs, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and standardisation needs. Thomas Zemen, Principal Scientist at the Center for Digital Safety and Security, highlights one aspect: "Realising all performance parameters for highly reliable low-latency radio links is one of the biggest challenges in designing 5G radio access networks based on distributed components".

Based on the findings, policy options for action were then identified to facilitate the development of a viable 5G coverage system in Europe.

The study was conducted under the leadership of AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, RAND Europe, Fraunhofer ISI and IMEC, and Arthur D. Little.

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