Telecom
Ericsson, MIT Technology Review Insights Release a Report on How Operators are Preparing for 5G
Ericsson, in collaboration with MIT Technology Review Insights, released a report titled “The 5G Operator” to examine how telecom operators are preparing for 5G opportunities and challenges.
5G network technology gives telecommunications operators the ability to deliver many new applications and services in dynamic ways. Low-latency connectivity, ultra-high broadband speeds, and mobile edge computing capabilities will create myriad innovative business opportunities as well as consumer experiences.
Many of 5G’s clearer use cases—such as autonomous vehicle fleets, internet of things, and management of fully-automated factories—are enterprise-focused, which gives operators a path to new revenue creation.
But such services are still only just emerging, and carriers do not possess all the vertical-industry knowledge or specific application development experience to effectively explore the seemingly infinite service opportunities that 5G presents.
There is a growing understanding that operators cannot do it alone, and that an innovative ecosystem of partners will be crucial to future success.
This report explores how IT and network executives at leading operators worldwide are creating a roadmap to 5G, including strategies for rethinking network operations, IT, business support systems (BSS), and business processes to accommodate a growing number of digital service partners in rapidly expanding ecosystems. The key findings are as follows:
- Collaboration is the operating model for 5G delivery. 5G provides telecoms operators with powerful technological capabilities that can dramatically accelerate the digital transformation of companies across industries and geographies.
But executives interviewed for this report state that getting the full value of 5G is not something they can do on their own. To take advantage of the infinite possibilities will require an ecosystem of partners, and partner collaboration will become the baseline for success.
Partnerships will include hardware and software companies, traditional and digital players, and large and small innovators—all of which can bring specific application and domain expertise needed to exploit new niches.
- Scaling 5G services will require an ‘app store’ style of customized connectivity. To be an effective innovation partner in the 5G era, BSS functions such as billing, service creation, and catalog management must be open and agile, and provide opportunity for partners to “plug-and-play.”
One implication of this is that BSS capabilities, empowered by AI, analytics, and automation, will provide building blocks for partners to employ by themselves in a type of “app store.”
The goal for becoming truly scalable and innovative is to become close to “zero touch,” which will require greater network and IT integration for the automation of key BSS functions such as “configure, price, quote.”
- Rich data sets offer infinite opportunities for automation, AI, and real-time insight. With increasingly rich data sets, operators are becoming their customers’ partners in business intelligence, AI, and in generating new opportunities for value creation.
This requires operators to become more embedded in their customers’ digital businesses using increasingly virtualized and automated capabilities, provisioning uniquely defined services around specific customer requirements.
- Cloud migration is a key success factor for BSS. Cloud migration is certainly at the top of the agenda for network operators in their preparation for 5G.
But there is less maturity in moving network functions to the cloud than there is in IT, and there is little appetite for moving stable applications to a cloud environment where they may be more costly or challenging to virtualize.
Customer experience is one capability that executives agree should be moved to the cloud—a virtualized, on-demand service delivery platform is the foundation upon which new innovative services will be created swiftly, in collaboration with the carrier, its service partners, and customers.
- 5G will be an organizational as well as technological transformation. From sales and marketing to operations, IT, network management, pricing, and billing, there will be enormous changes that operators must plan for in 5G roadmaps.
The internal processes of telecoms operators are usually more aligned to consumer than enterprise segments, and this will need to change as connected devices soon outnumber human subscribers and complex enterprise services are deployed at scale.
A huge shift is the closer integration of network and IT teams, processes, and platforms, as service provisioning becomes more virtualized and new offers are developed with partners in cloud-native environments.
Telecommunications operators have resumed full SIM swap and related services following a four-week nationwide outage linked to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)’s migration to a new verification platform.
The outage rendered millions of subscribers unable to perform SIM-related tasks such as swaps, replacements, and activations.
Operators in the industry say the disruption began on June 26, 2025 when telcos temporarily halted SIM registrations and swaps due to unforeseen technical challenges during the transition to NIMC’s upgraded identity verification system.
The migration was mandated to enhance the integrity and efficiency of national identity management but caused major service interruptions across all Nigerian networks.
However, July 21, both MTN and Airtel confirmed via their social media handles that SIM swap services have now fully resumed.
MTN announced: “SIM swaps have now resumed. We can confirm that NIMC services are fully operational and appreciate their support in the migration to a new platform for NIN verification services for the telecommunications industry.
In a public update issued via its MTN Nigeria Support handle on X (formerly Twitter), MTN confirmed that SIM swaps have now resumed.
Telecom operators complained that the portal was unreliable or inaccessible, which resulted in the suspension of SIM swaps, number porting, and new SIM registrations, even though NIMC maintained that the platform was operating as intended.
Unexpected technical difficulties arose during the switch to the new platform, according to the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria.
Real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and network migration was impacted by these issues.
“Unexpected technical difficulties have surfaced, impacting real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and porting, following a recent directive from the National Identity Management Commission mandating Mobile Network Operators to transit to a new identity verification platform,” ALTON stated in a previous joint statement signed by Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, and Damian Udeh, publicity secretary.
The World Bank has affirmed that 84 per cent of adults in low-and middle-income economies, including Nigeria, own personal mobile phones.
The bank in its Global Findex 2025 report said mobile phone ownership was widespread and nearly everywhere. It said data from the Global Findex 2025 Digital Connectivity Tracker, revealed that “86 per cent of adults worldwide, and 84 per cent of adults in low- and middle-income economies, own personal mobile phones.”
The report pointed out that mobile phones and the internet had become widespread and essential to daily life in every economy around the world.
A earlier overview had indicated that Nigeria had a high mobile phone penetration rate, with estimates around 85 per cent to 87 per cent in 2024.
This translates to over 200 million mobile connections, making Nigeria a leading market in Africa for mobile phone ownership and usage. While the overall penetration is high, there’s a growing trend towards smartphone adoption, with forecasts predicting over 140 million smartphone users by 2025.
According to DataReporter, a total of 150 million cellular mobile connections were active in Nigeria in early 2025, with this figure equivalent to 64.0 per cent of the total population.
However, note that some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may not include access to the internet.
There were 107 million individuals using the internet in Nigeria at the start of 2025, when online penetration stood at 45.4 percent. Nigeria was home to 38.7 million social media user identities in January 2025, equating to 16.4 percent of the total population.
These headline stats offer a great overview of the “state of digital” in Nigeria at the start of 2025, but in order to make sense of how digital trends and behaviours have been evolving over time, we need to dig deeper into the data.
According to the World Bank, “as of 2024, individual ownership of mobile phones reached 86 per cent of adults worldwide.
“For many people, barely an hour goes by without their using a mobile device to make a call, ext a friend, read the news, access business information, post a meme on social media, pay for something, play a game, engage with a colleague or a customer, or search for information.
“As access to and use of digitally connected technologies increase, people, businesses, and governments place an increasingly high priority on online interactions. “Digitally connected technologies have clear, well-documented benefits.”
It further highlighted that access to mobile phones and the internet was associated with reduced poverty, increased consumption, and more employment for individuals in lowand middle-income economies.
“Women also experience these benefits, as internet access enables access to flexible jobs3 and has been shown to increase female labor force participation. “Mobile phones also facilitate information sharing.
For instance, in agricultural contexts, farmers’ access to real-time prices and buyer demand data can inform their decisions on where to sell, enhancing market efficiency and reducing the distances they would otherwise travel to get the best return for their product and time.
“Internet access also helps create jobs and aids individuals and countries in exporting goods and services,” it added. The World Bank further noted that owning a mobile phone furthermore enabled financial access through mobile money and other mobile financial services.
It added that these financial accounts and services, typically offered by mobile network operators or fintech firms and accessed via networks of local agents, were associated with lower rates of poverty, increased consumption and savings,and greater resilience to economic shocks.
Sophos, a global leader of innovative security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, today announced that it has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP), marking the 16th consecutive time the company has received this recognition.
Sophos has been recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) since the inaugural publication for this category in 2007.
Sophos’ market-leading endpoint security solutions include Sophos Endpoint powered by Intercept X, Sophos Extended Detection and Response (EDR/XDR), and Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR).
Over 300,000 organizations trust Sophos endpoint security solutions to defend against cyberthreats, including advanced remote ransomware attacks and active adversaries.
Unique to Sophos, the solution includes adaptive defenses that automatically disrupt attackers by dynamically adjusting protection levels based on threat context.
“Sophos’ strength lies in its prevention-first strategy, designed to stop breaches before they start, adapt defenses in real time, and strengthen detection and response when it matters most,” said Kyle Falkenhagen, SVP, Product Management, Sophos. “We believe that receiving this recognition in the highly competitive endpoint security market for 16 consecutive reports reflects our relentless focus on developing innovative solutions that stay ahead of the global threat landscape and the adversaries we face every day.”
Sophos and Secureworks: The future of protection, detection, and response
Following Sophos’ acquisition of Secureworks in February 2025, combining two leading and complementary portfolios to offer a comprehensive suite of solutions for small, midmarket and enterprise organizations.
Secureworks Taegis XDR customers can use Sophos Endpoint to elevate their cyber defenses, at no additional charge, delivering both improved protection and return on investment.
The integration of Secureworks also adds a new Counter Threat Unit (CTU) to the Sophos X-Ops advanced threat response joint task force, further expanding the rich threat intelligence that informs all customers’ defenses.
Backed by Sophos’ advanced security technologies and a broad network of intelligence contacts and partners, the CTU plays a critical role in identifying and tracking threat actors and analyzing anomalous activity, uncovering new attack techniques, threats, and major shifts in the threat landscape.
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