Private 5G, Innovations and More: Juniper Networks Service Provider Predictions 2022

By Vivek Kalra

2021 has been a roller coaster ride for the entire world. How we interact, conduct business, obtain an education, and entertain ourselves has forever changed. And in 2022, we will keep redefining this brand new world. In India, digitally enabled businesses of all sizes and consumers are driving data consumption, which is estimated to grow to 100 million terabytes by 2022.

As data consumption soars, Indian service providers must meet the rising demand for high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity while expanding network capacity. Here's what to expect in the service provider sector in 2022.

Private 5G will unlock new innovations

With the 5G spectrum option slated to finally happen in the first half of 2022, 5G is finally arriving in India. All big operators have been doing 5G Trials and influencing the 5G ecosystem based on what will work for India, across Enterprise and individual mobile users. Private 5G is poised to become a $5.7B industry by the end of 2024, according to industry observers. With its low latency and enhanced security, private 5G will give enterprises the platform they need to implement breakthrough applications that require near-real-time responses and actions, as well as faster data processing for AI/ML. The adoption of private 5G is set to transform sectors like health care, gaming, manufacturing, and emergency services, with production deployments becoming more common over the next 18-24 months.

Next year, we will see enterprise organizations begin the process to take advantage of these opportunities and in doing so, look to service providers to help them make significant progress toward rolling out next-generation applications and achieving breakout business value. AWS's recent announcement to offer Private 5G Services has further hot up things.

Metro networks will begin their much-needed transformation

Metro networks will play a more critical role in new profitable and innovative services delivery, as the place in the network where connectivity, hosting, and service experience converge. The metro is the future of services and will need to be reimagined in the coming year. As a result, we will see network operators move away from traditional siloed metro architectures built from the transport up to a refreshed design focused on service delivery, coupling IP connectivity with hosted elements and content, along with security and automation.

Emerging 5G and edge services present a once-in-a-generation opportunity for service providers. Using concepts like network slicing, dynamic edge compute, and automation, they will start to roll out exciting new enterprise and consumer applications on converged metro fabrics that simply weren’t possible before.

The broadband market transformation will pick up steam

There is a new service provider buying cycle in broadband network infrastructure buildouts driven by a variety of factors: evolving architectures, growth in work from home, increasing bandwidth and low latency demands, and new government infrastructure incentives. The performance ramifications of emerging service offerings to support 5G, IoT, and UHD Video, among others, are pressuring network operators to seek new economies of scale to financially right size while they seek to boost capacity without increased costs.

Consequently, the market will start to transition from centralized/traditional architectures to exploit distributed, horizontally and vertically disaggregated, and converged wireline and wireless broadband solutions.

Demand for the adoption of 400G will skyrocket

The market for 400G is exponentially increasing as the world transforms digitally. Although there is no Moore’s law equivalent for the pace at which network traffic grows, a similar dynamic is in effect. Every new application and advancement depends on moving more and more data for it to succeed. Think 4K/8K and remote work or IoT and artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Next up: the metaverse and virtual worlds. As traffic levels continue to grow, we will see network operators accelerate the adoption of 400G to future-proof networks for what lies ahead. What’s more, future-looking network operators will get ready for the next big increase in demand by choosing platforms capable of supporting a seamless transition to 800G when needed.

Vivek Kalra is the Director and Head of Telecom Business, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks