The corporate collaborated with protection firm, Leonardo, and the Italian Navy to trial a 5G Standalone community aboard naval ships
5G SA at sea: Ericsson collaborates with Leonardo and the Italian Navy to display 5G SA connectivity between two naval vessels.
Protection pivot in motion: The trial comes after CEO, Börje Ekholm, outlined plans to allocate extra capital towards protection as RAN market plateaus, through the latest earnings calls.
State of 5G SA: Operator monetization of 5G SA stays gradual regardless of rising deployments in 2025
Ericsson, in collaboration with protection contractor Leonardo, and the Italian Navy, examined a 5G Standalone (SA) community on board naval ships engaged in a coaching situation within the open sea.
The trial which was demonstrated on the Italian Navy’s protection initiative, Operational Experimentation (OPEX) 2-25 within the Gulf of Taranto, was carried out utilizing a self-contained Ericsson 5G SA community underpinned by the corporate’s Extremely Compact Core and Huge MIMO Radio Entry Community platforms.
The gear had been put in on board a lead ship, whereas the Ericsson 5G SA buyer premises gear (CPE) which connects end-user units to the community, was arrange in a second ship.
Then leveraging Leonardo’s NINE encryption resolution, a safe, real-time, trade of knowledge was demonstrated between the 2 vessels. In response to Ericsson, the information included categorised and nonclassified info, resembling “full situational consciousness from the Fight Administration System and video streams from 12 unmanned methods.”
“The OPEX validated the efficiency, safety and resilience of 5G SA for on-board linked methods, whereas additionally displaying how a unified 5G community can optimize spectrum utilization in comparison with a number of standalone communication methods working on unlicensed and probably overlapping, bands with interference dangers,” the corporate mentioned within the press launch.
“This profitable trial with Leonardo and the Italian Navy represents a big milestone in our ongoing dedication to advancing protection capabilities by means of 5G know-how,” Freddie Södergren, head of mission crucial networks, at Ericsson mentioned in an announcement.
A strategic shift
The trial comes after Börje Ekholm, president and CEO, through the latest earnings name in January, mentioned that the Swedish vendor will shift consideration to mission-critical and enterprise markets the place its has an natural benefit, amid a flat RAN market.
“On this setting, we plan to extend investments in protection throughout 2026 whereas persevering with to optimize our price base to assist margins and money move era,” Ekholm mentioned.
Earlier this yr, Ericsson additionally unveiled a 5G-Superior location service constructed on its 5G SA core. The service determines machine places from one base station versus triangulation fashions that depend on a number of base stations for a similar.
5G SA deployments picked up in 2025. An Omdia report discovered that after the 2024 droop, 5G SA deployments rose because the know-how discovered functions throughout industries.
Nevertheless, regardless of being a superior know-how with added benefits like built-in assist for community slices that enables connectivity to be tuned to the wants of customers and functions, buyer uptake stays low, and a majority of operators that soft-launched 5G SA in 2025 are nonetheless struggling to monetize it.
Conversely, Ericsson’s trial reveals that 5G SA might have a spot past the buyer market the place it might ship actual worth in difficult environments. Optimized for edge computing, the structure might allow operators to carry high-quality connectivity to crucial sectors the place resilience is vital, and SA can unlock use instances that conventional 5G connectivity can not assist.
