A few observations.
- Ericsson is not just purpose-built; software is run natively in data centers. Nokia will do the same in the future if servers are equipped with GPUs.
- There are very few multi-vendor operators, and even then, vendors operate in dedicated market areas if economies of scale are to be achieved. Operating costs increase too much if NOC personnel must be able to operate networks from two different vendors. This problem will be alleviated in the future with the help of AI.
- The energy efficiency of radios is traditionally managed using a scale-up/scale-down approach. The procedure you described would be scale-out/scale-in, which is more difficult to manage (commissioning, operation) and ties up more of the operator’s capital.
- Although operators have plenty of mobile data capacity available, they must prepare for traffic growth. In the USA, the main trend is Wi-Fi offload. Globally, 80% of mobile data is Wi-Fi traffic. The remaining is 3GPP mobile data, 80% of which is non-mobile in nature, i.e., broadband access type. A large part of that traffic will move to fiber, so genuine mobile 3GPP traffic is ultimately quite marginal, which dampens operators’ appetite for investment.