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GSA: 26 telcos investing in 5G-A across 15 countries

Juan Pedro Tomás
By Juan Pedro Tomás
5GCarriersNetwork Infrastructure

The recent GSA report noted that a total of 14 operators are evaluating, testing or trialing the technology

In sum – what you need to know:

26 operators across 15 countries investing in 5G-A – According to GSA, Telstra, China Mobile and Singtel are among the telcos that have already launched the technology.

Ecosystem still maturing – Only one chipset is fully compliant with 3GPP Release 18 (Snapdragon 8 Elite). Broader device and modem support is expected later in 2025.

5G-Advanced brings key upgrades – Features include AI-native networks, improved MIMO, energy savings, better uplink performance and precise indoor positioning — critical for sectors like logistics, AR navigation and autonomous vehicles.

The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has identified 26 operators in 15 countries investing in 5G-Advanced (5G-A) technology.

The recent GSA report noted that a total of 14 operators are evaluating, testing or trialing the technology.

“This is expected given that 5G-Advanced is a new technology, with operators testing its capabilities and determining how best to use its different functions. Also, operators are waiting for the device ecosystem to progress before launching 5G-Advanced so customers can experience the benefits,” GSA said.

However, GSA has identified six operators with launched 5G-Advanced networks, including Telstra in Australia, China Mobile in China, CTM in Macao SAR and Singtel in Singapore. One operator is currently deploying a 5G-Advanced network, one is piloting a deployment and four operators are planning 5G-Advanced investments, the association said.

“Asia has seen the most activity for 5G-Advanced, with countries like India, Uzbekistan and Taiwan investing and China and Macao SAR launching 5G-Advanced. There has been little activity in North America and Latin America, with only one country in each region investing in the technology. Europe is slightly more active, with Turkey and Finland investing. Currently, no countries are investing in 5G-Advanced in Africa,” the entity added.

The report highlighted that the main features of 5G-Advanced, which is part of 3GPP Release 18, include integrating AI and machine learning into the network, improving multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas and enhancing the network’s energy efficiency.

The association noted that this technology boasts improved signal quality, reduced interference and better use of bandwidth compared with previous versions of 5G. 5G-Advanced also broadens network operators’ services in 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap), network slicing, virtual and augmented reality and non-terrestrial networks, according to the mobile association.

“The introduction of 5G-Advanced is expected to increase the use of 5G standalone, which many operators invested in during the early 2020s. It will also improve the quality of services and reduce costs, as well as opening up new opportunities in the enterprise, industrial and government sectors,” GSA said.

The report also noted that 5G-Advanced delivers faster and more consistent mobile broadband speeds than earlier versions of 5G. It enhances spectral efficiency and uplink performance, which allows for better user experiences in dense environments like stadiums, transport hubs and smart cities.

The report also pointed out that 5G-Advanced can only be deployed after the roll-out of 5G standalone as a public or a private network deployment for an enterprise, utility, education, government or other organization requiring a private campus network.

As of GSA’s latest update in April 2025, 163 operators in 65 countries are investing in 5G standalone networks. GSA has identified at least 73 operators in 40 countries that have launched or softlaunched 5G standalone, representing 44.7% of those investing.

“For these operators, the next step in their network infrastructure strategy is to roll out 5G-Advanced,” according to the report.

The GSA report also highlighted that only one chipset has been released that is fully compatible with 3GPP Release 18 standards from a hardware and software perspective, which is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform. “However, we note that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform is hardware compatible and needs a software upgrade to be fully compliant with the standard.”

GSA said it has tracked 75 devices that are hardware-compatible with 3GPP Release 18 and use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform or Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform.

“As the ecosystem progresses with more investment in chipsets, modems and devices, more operators will be encouraged to invest in 5G-Advanced mobile infrastructure, helping to grow the ecosystem. We expect this to start in late 2025 with the adoption of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X85 5G Modem-RF system,” the report added.

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ABOUT AUTHOR

Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro Tomás
Juan Pedro covers Global Carriers and Global Enterprise IoT. Prior to RCR, Juan Pedro worked for Business News Americas, covering telecoms and IT news in the Latin American markets. He also worked for Telecompaper as their Regional Editor for Latin America and Asia/Pacific. Juan Pedro has also contributed to Latin Trade magazine as the publication's correspondent in Argentina and with political risk consultancy firm Exclusive Analysis, writing reports and providing political and economic information from certain Latin American markets. He has a degree in International Relations and a master in Journalism and is married with two kids.

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Google Cloud Next shows how network operators and vendors are using AI for telecom

We already know that businesses are pushing hard to figure out how artificial intelligence can benefit them. In telecom specifically, an Nvidia survey earlier this year found that 37% of respondents said their companies were investing in AI for telecom to improve network planning and operations, and 33% said that there had already been investments in AI for telecom field operations.

At this week’s Google Cloud Next event, some of Google Cloud’s specific work on advancing the use of AI for telecom is being highlighted, as well as AI for enterprises in other verticals. Here are three perspectives on how companies are leveraging Google Cloud AI for telecom.

–Verizon has integrated Google Cloud’s generative AI into customer operations, which the two companies said has led to “95% comprehensive answerability for customer inquiries” and “demonstrably more efficient and effective customer care interactions.” Verizon is making use of a Google Cloud conversational AI agent that leverages Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, Gemini models and Agent Assist Panel in order to give its customer service reps “real-time, context-aware, and personalized answers” to customer questions, as opposed to the reps having to do manual searches of knowledge bases.

Verizon has deployed this across 28,000 customer care reps and retail stores. Additional features like automated summaries of conversations, and automated follow-up action reminders, are also in the process of being rolled out. Those internal AI agents are in addition to several genAI tools that are directly customer-facing and use Google’s Gemini models for virtual assistants which use natural language.

Background image: Verizon

“Our collaboration with Google Cloud and the integration of Gemini into our customer care platforms mark a significant advancement in our commitment to providing exceptional customer experiences,” said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, CEO of Verizon Consumer. “The tangible results demonstrate the power of AI to enhance efficiency and empower our customer care teams.”

“The impact of Gemini on Verizon’s customer service operations is a testament to our deep partnership and Verizon’s commitment to continued innovation,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “These results demonstrate the potential of AI to not just improve operations, but to create more meaningful and helpful interactions for customers everywhere, ultimately driving significant value for businesses.”

-“We’re really trying hard to build an autonomous network which is going to be obviously driven by AI more and more over time,” said David Sauvageau, director of software development, data and AI for Bell Canada, in a briefing call prior to Google Cloud Next.

In general, he continued, the network operator see AI as a “fundamental building block for the future of telecom, for innovation, for customer operations and for network operations.”

He said in the short-term, Bell Canada is prioritizing AI applications for telecom which “really focus on optimizing our customer experience and network ops.” For the latter in particular, Sauvageau said, “Our goal is really to leverage all the data that we have available in AI in order to predict and prevent issues before they actually impact our customers. So, really moving from reactive to preventive customer experience.”

Additionally, Sauvageau said, that Bell Canada believes AI is crucial for managing the increased complexity of telecom networks. “We need to be much more efficient, [and have] have faster innovations in areas like edge computing, digital twin, 6G or any other future network technologies. And ultimately … our goal is to build and accelerate the development of our AI-powered autonomous networks.”

-Razvan Teslaru, VP and head of strategy and portfolio for cloud software and services at Ericsson, said that the use of AI for telecom encompasses both increased efficiency and increased monetization—the latter being magic words for the telecom industry right now.

Autonomy is both about enabling differentiated connectivity at scale, he said, and monetization of that differentiated connectivity. At this year’s Mobile World Congress Barcelona, one of the things Ericsson spotlights was how it integrates its service orchestration with Google Cloud and its Vertex AI, Teslaru noted.

It’s now possible, he said, for a user to express their intent in natural language: A request to configure a specific type of connectivity to, say, a hospital, over a dedicated slice. “You can have Gemini interpret that intent and break it into service orders. … Then AI agents can take over these service orders and take them into execution, and also observe the results, so we can take corrective action autonomously,” he said.

So ultimately, then, network autonomy is about delivering personalized (or differentiated) connectivity with efficiency, while also doing so at a scale that means more effective and large-scale monetization.

Google Cloud emphasizes AI agents for telecom

Erwan Menard, director (outbound) of product management for cloud AI at Google Cloud, said that “When we look ahead, we envision networks that can largely manage themselves through the use of intelligent software agents.” He continued: “Think of these agents as digital experts that can automatically handle tasks like network configuration, problem solving and resource allocation.This would free up telcos from any routine operational burden, allowing human experts to focus on innovation and new services, ultimately leading to greater efficiency and productivity in network operations.”

In particular, he emphasized, telecoms face the unique challenge of having a “mission-critical duty to maintain knowledge over technologies which could be in service for decades. So the notion of being able to tap accurately through the knowledge of the company to help onboard a new resource or to assist somebody who has a decision to make—technical or business—is quite an important challenge in the telecom industry.” Google Cloud’s Google Agentspace was designed for such knowledge-heavy industries, Menard continued, to retrieve information across multiple systems with the idea of using “agentic workflows to be able to invest a new way of work.”

This week, the company is spotlighting its a new Agent Gallery, so that employees across the telecom organization can get personalized suggestions on which AI agents would be useful to them—either out-of-the-box from Google Cloud, agents built by the company or third-party AI agents. Google Cloud is also offering the ability to design and build agents with a no-code interface, in which people can essentially walk through a series of steps and “convert that sequence into an agent that then becomes your personalized assistant,” Menard explained.

 

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