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One of the key themes for telecom at MWC Barcelona 2025 was ‘Own the Home,’ with 5G Fixed Wireless Access identified as one of the emerging areas in the pursuit of new revenue opportunities in this space. 5G FWA is gaining increasing attention, quickly becoming more widely adopted across the globe for providing high-speed connectivity. With over 200 commercial deployments already in place, 5G FWA is meeting the needs of areas where traditional broadband solutions like fiber or cable fall short.
As we look toward the future, 5G FWA is poised to be a game-changer in extending connectivity and capturing new revenue streams for telecom operators.
The Market Opportunity of 5G FWA
The momentum behind 5G FWA is undeniable, with expectations to grow to 330 million connections by 2029. This surge is largely driven by FWA's ability to provide consistent and competitive internet speeds, even in underserved regions. For telecom operators, 5G FWA represents an opportunity to expand services and boost revenue, particularly through four key approaches:
Upsell Existing Customers: By meeting basic connectivity needs, operators can encourage users to upgrade their services. Enhancements like speed boosts for gaming, application-specific service-level agreements (SLAs), and premium video bundles help build on current subscriptions.
Offer Premium Services with 5G Standalone: With 5G Standalone (SA) networks, operators can capture a premium audience, offering value-added services like cloud gaming and extended reality.
Own Indoor Coverage: Consumers spend over 80% of their time indoors, and 5G/Wi-Fi CPE solutions help operators better address indoor connectivity needs, tapping into urban markets or areas not yet served by fiber.
Enter the Enterprise Market: FWA offers SLA-backed services that guarantee performance and reliability for small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises, particularly in remote or temporary locations.
Addressing QoE Challenges
While 5G FWA offers immense opportunities, operators must focus on enhancing the Quality of Experience (QoE) for users. Customers prioritize the experience, not just speed, particularly for applications like video streaming and gaming. FWA networks must address common challenges like connection drops, speed inconsistency, and interference issues to ensure user satisfaction and adoption.
Spirent’s insights reveal that frequency congestion, equipment misconfiguration, and interference between Wi-Fi and 5G signals are frequent culprits that need attention. Addressing these areas effectively will be crucial to expanding 5G monetization opportunities.
Lab-to-Live: A Smarter Testing Approach
Ensuring high QoE requires a comprehensive approach to testing, both in lab environments and live networks. Lab-to-Live (L2L) testing integrates hardware and software validation, lab testing, network deployment, and ongoing operations into a streamlined, automated workflow. This continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) approach helps bridge the gap between controlled lab conditions and real-world network performance.
Lab-to-Live Testing High-Level Topology
Incorporating continuous testing (CT) throughout the lifecycle – from initial design to deployment and ongoing monitoring – reduces risks and ensures FWA solutions perform reliably at scale and accelerate time-to-market of FWA offerings. By shifting left – testing early – and shifting right – testing in production – a continuous testing and improvement loop helps increase the Net Promoter Score (NPS), enhance QoE, grow revenue, and reduce operational costs.
Key Testing Strategies to Unlock FWA Potential
Operators should validate their offerings across various real-world scenarios, targeting specific areas including:
QoE Benchmarking: By testing the end-to-end user experience across common applications, operators can ensure they meet consumer expectations for streaming, gaming, and telework.
Mesh Network Reliability: Real-world home environments are emulated to test signal steering, ensuring that 5G FWA-powered mesh networks provide consistent, strong coverage across a household.
Competitive Benchmarking: Live network benchmarking helps assess the performance of FWA offerings against competitors, providing valuable insights into differentiation and opportunities for improvement.
Benefits of Comprehensive Testing
Comprehensive testing of 5G FWA offers numerous benefits to both operators and end-users, including:
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Reliable, high-quality service leads to better user experiences and reduces churn.
Improved Competitive Positioning: Benchmarking helps operators optimize their services and adjust strategies to stand out from competitors.
Reduced Operational Costs: Testing helps prevent costly truck rolls and service calls by identifying issues early.
Accelerated Time-to-Market: Rigorous testing gives operators the confidence to deploy services more quickly, while ensuring they meet consumer demands.
Future-Proofing Investments: Testing validates the performance of advanced services like 5G Standalone and cloud gaming, ensuring readiness for future demand.
Ensuring 5G FWA Success
The success of 5G Fixed Wireless Access hinges on providing a superior quality of experience, particularly for bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming and gaming. Operators need a strong testing partner to ensure that their FWA deployments meet expectations and deliver value. Spirent's expertise in lab and live network testing helps operators address challenges, optimize services, and seize new monetization opportunities.
Download our eBook Testing Strategies for Maximizing 5G Fixed Wireless Access Value for a comprehensive look at the testing strategies that are unlocking 5G FWA’s full potential.
