5G Standalone Adoption: From Market Momentum to Commercial Impact

Building on 5G Standalone discussions from MWC Barcelona earlier this year, this closed-door roundtable will bring together regional and global industry leaders to assess how far the market has progressed and what needs to happen next as the industry looks towards 2030. As SA adoption continues to build globally, operators are entering a critical phase: moving beyond deployment to unlock new revenue, efficiency and enterprise growth opportunities.

The session will place stronger focus on the demand story behind 5G SA and Multi-Tenant Environments (MTEs). Emerging enterprise use cases are changing what “good” connectivity means, shifting the conversation from faster speeds and bigger pipes to assured performance, security, isolation, observability and commercial flexibility. Airports, ports, stadiums, major event venues, industrial clusters, utilities, smart infrastructure and distributed enterprise environments are all creating new demand for tailored connectivity that sits between best-effort public networks and fully private deployments.

Drawing on the latest GSMA MTE report findings, the discussion will explore how MTEs can help address this emerging “scalable middle” by enabling multiple tenants, sites or use cases to access private-grade capabilities over shared 5G SA or hybrid infrastructure. The roundtable will consider where demand is becoming most tangible, which emerging use cases could accelerate commercial momentum, and how operators can productise advanced SA capabilities such as network slicing, QoS/QoD, security, exposure, automation and performance assurance into monetisable enterprise services.

The session will also examine the barriers slowing SA adoption and commercialisation, including investment requirements, product readiness, orchestration, dynamic slicing, billing and charging models, enterprise awareness, go-to-market capability, and regulatory considerations. In addition, the North American GSMA team will share findings from a survey of smaller North American MNOs exploring the barriers to SA deployment, including potential challenges around network slicing and other advanced SA capabilities. These insights will help ground the discussion in operator realities and identify what support, collaboration and market signals are needed to accelerate adoption.