- Dell'Oro Group said that the mobile core market will grow by 6% through 2029
- Analyst Dave Bolan said AI could increase that growth over time
- AT&T, Verizon and other operators are already offering 5G SA services to enterprises
Research firm Dell’Oro Group has issued its latest Mobile Core Network (MCN) report, predicting faster expansion of the market because more mobile network operators (MNOs) are finally deploying standalone (SA) 5G.
Dell’Oro Research Director Dave Bolan said in the report that the MCN segment is currently expected to grow at a 6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2029. “The emergence of Generative AI and Agentic AI...with expectations for continuous, low-latency connectivity, may eventually require expanded network capacity, which could push the growth rate even higher.” he said.
Dell’Oro now estimates that 70 MNOs have deployed 5G SA networks in 39 countries/territories.
“In 2025 alone, five new 5G SA networks were launched, including Orange in France, Romania, and Slovakia; Vodafone in Spain, and O2 in the Czech Republic. Regionally, we count five networks in North America, 26 in Europe, seven in the Middle East and Africa, 13 in Northeast Asia, 13 in Southeast Asia, and six in Latin America,” the group said in a statement. (See chart below.)
“Many MNOs already offer 5G SA for enterprises and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), but have not yet opened the 5G SA network to consumers; however, they are expected to do so soon,” Dell’Oro noted. That includes AT&T and Verizon in the U.S., Bouygues Telecom, O2 Telefónica, and SFR in France, Bharti Airtel in India, 3 in Ireland and Sunrise in Switzerland.
Verizon has recently said that it has taken first responder priority network nationwide, which indicates that it has a country-wide 5G SA network in place in order to support that. We asked Verizon which enterprises it is supporting with 5GSA applications like network slicing and 5G APIs. There was no response by press time.
Fierce is not actually sure how far AT&T has gotten with its 5G SA roll out yet. We asked the operator which states it has 5G SA so far, or, if it has actually moved to nationwide deployment. A spokesperson was looking for stats but had not sent any by press time.
Dell’Oro said that it couldn’t identify the companies that AT&T and Verizon are working with. “Names of users are not publicized yet,” Bolan told Fierce in an email.
We’ll follow up with a story about how AT&T and Verizon are getting along with their 5G SA deployments, and if they name any companies that are using their 5G SA services yet.