Monetising 5G standalone: from coverage to guaranteed performance

Seven years into the 5G era, the industry has built the coverage and bought the spectrum. What it has not done is get paid for the difference. The June 2026 Ericsson Mobility Report counts 3.1 billion 5G subscriptions after 162 million net additions in the first quarter, and forecasts 6.4 billion by the end of 2031¹. 5G networks already carried 48% of mobile data traffic at the end of 2025¹. Yet GSMA Intelligence concludes that the ‘build it and they will pay’ approach has not worked: revenue growth has remained modest and largely flat since launch, below 5%⁵.

The reason is architectural as much as commercial. Most 5G has been deployed in non-standalone mode on a 4G core, which delivers speed but not the capabilities that can be priced differently: guaranteed performance, network slicing, precise positioning and programmable exposure. Those depend on a 5G standalone (SA) core.

Standalone: the slow part of the rollout

Around 390 service providers have launched commercial 5G, more than 90 of them with SA¹. GSMA estimates that only about a quarter of operator groups have deployed SA at scale, although roughly two-thirds had deployed it on a small scale by 2024³. The brakes are operational rather than financial: in a GSMA Intelligence survey, 26% of operators cited technology maturity and 19% integration difficulties as the largest obstacle, while only 16% cited uncertain return on investment³. GSMA Intelligence forecasts 5.6 billion 5G connections by 2030, 65% of them on SA networks³.

Geography matters. In Europe only about 3% of connections run on 5G SA, compared with around 80% in China, 50% in India and 30% in the United States⁴. For European operators the monetisation question is therefore also a sequencing question: premium use cases cannot be sold until the core is in place.

Four routes to revenue, four different muscles

Where SA is live, four routes to revenue are visible, each with its own commercial logic.

• Fixed wireless access (FWA). The most proven. 71% of FWA providers now offer the service over 5G, up from 57% a year earlier, and 57% use speed-based tariffs, up from 51%¹. Ericsson projects FWA connections rising from 185 million in 2025 to 291 million by 2031, with 5G accounting for more than half by 2029². It is a capacity-pricing business, and the discipline it requires is cell-level capacity planning.
• Network slicing. Commercial differentiated-connectivity offerings based on SA slicing rose from 65 in November 2025 to 84 in June 2026¹. Early offers target broadcasters, events, public safety and enterprise sites. Slicing is sold as an assured outcome, so it needs SLA monitoring, assurance and billing that can prove what was delivered.
• Uplink-heavy enterprise services. Uplink is becoming the constraint: 43 of 55 service providers measured by Ericsson saw uplink traffic grow faster than downlink¹. GSMA Intelligence notes that AI-driven enterprise uses such as video analytics and robotics often need 10–50 Mbps or more of sustained uplink⁵, a capability that can be priced.
• Network APIs. The most discussed and the least mature route, covered below.

Network APIs: real revenue, but fraud-led and small

The CAMARA project launched in early 2022 to standardise network APIs, and the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative has since created a consistent catalogue across operators⁹⁶. Forecasts have been reset downwards. STL Partners now projects $31 billion of telecom API revenue by 2030, 8% below its previous forecast because of delayed launches⁷. Juniper Research estimates operator revenue from authentication and fraud-prevention APIs at $252 million in 2025, rising to $4.9 billion by 2030, with fraud prevention accounting for around 90% of network API revenue in 2025⁸.

The GSMA’s own diagnosis is candid. Even where enterprise demand is strong, operator revenues from network APIs remain modest; APIs tend to be consumed tactically inside authentication and assurance flows; and ‘a catalogue of capabilities isn’t a product’⁶. It argues for sector-specific packaging and outcome-based pricing, pointing to financial services, where SIM Swap and KYC Match are sold as fraud-reduction tools, as the model⁶. At the operational end, a large US operator reports ‘hundreds of billions of API calls’ a month, largely for point-of-sale and silent authentication⁹.

Standalone as the bridge to 6G

There is also a defensive case for SA. Network data traffic grew 22% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, faster than expected², and uplink is becoming the bottleneck as AI applications and user-generated video grow¹. Ericsson expects the first implementable 6G specifications around the end of 2028 or early 2029 and the first commercial 6G services around 2030¹. GSMA argues that investing in SA now spreads some of the capex that 6G will require, because the transition to a 6G core could come through a software upgrade rather than a wholesale equipment swap, and lets operators test 6G-style use cases on today’s networks³. Operators that delay SA therefore risk paying twice: once to catch up on 5G capabilities, and again to prepare for 6G.

The implication for planning is that SA should be justified on a portfolio basis rather than use case by use case. FWA capacity pricing, a small number of assured-performance contracts and fraud-prevention APIs can carry the early economics, while the same core investment positions the network for 6G.

What to do next

For most operators the sequencing is clear: complete the SA core where it is missing, lead with FWA and fraud-prevention APIs where demand is proven, and build slicing propositions for a handful of verticals where outcomes can be contracted and evidenced. The measure of success should change too, from coverage and subscriptions to revenue per unit of assured capacity.