After a year-long lull, Nokia reported a resurgence in global network operators’ interest for 5G Standalone (SA). Speaking at the Nokia MWC 2025 Press and Analyst Briefing event on Sunday, Pekka Lundmark, President & CEO of Nokia talked about the company’s efforts to move core network to cloud and its ongoing efforts in terms of 5G SA services.

“It has been discussed quite a lot that the 5G SA core development has been slower than anticipated, which is true, but it is now accelerating. We have over 125 5G SA core deals across the world but the reality is that most of them have not been deployed yet. About 60 service providers in the world have deployed 5G standalone core today and we have supplied to about 35 of them. So it is still fairly early stage, but that said it is now accelerating and we have recent deals with AT&T, Ooredoo Qatar, Telefonica Spain just to name a few,” said Lundmark.

In August 2024, Counterpoint market research noted a slowdown in operators’ transition to 5G SA, with most opting for Ericsson, hitting Nokia’s complementary network service (CNS) business.

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Despite network vendor encouragement for operators to upgrade their networks to 5G SA, cloud-native core solutions, to monetise their 5G investments, operators did not see any immediate business opportunities and took a wait-and-watch approach to further infrastructure investments. Counterpoint reported that operators did not benefit from 5G networks, apart from better speed which discouraged the enterprise segment from upgrading their network solutions.

“We had a very tough market in 2023 and the first half of 2024 when service providers all of a sudden decided that they want to cut their investment after the big investment boom in 2021-22. That obviously led to pretty challenging topline development for all. But the markets are now coming back, there is increased momentum. We have reduced cost, improved our technology position and that should put us in a good position now when the markets are coming back,” said Lundmark.