CSP 5G-Advanced Network Infrastructure Solutions

CSP 5G-Advanced Network Infrastructure Solutions is the name Gartner's market is transitioning toward, and the transition is the story. The published scorecard under the old name, the Magic Quadrant for CSP 5G RAN Infrastructure Solutions, dated September 2025, is anchored on the radio network alone. The new name widens the frame to the full network infrastructure, and the two vendors who have led every edition since 2021 now lead different halves of the argument.

The rename that widens the frame

The old name scored the radio: the antennas, radios, and RAN software that connect devices to the network. The new name scores the network infrastructure around 5G-Advanced, the standards release that adds AI-native capability, energy efficiency, and new service classes on top of the 5G rollout.

The rename records where operator money is moving. The 5G radio rollout is largely bought. What operators are buying now is the upgrade layer, the AI-enabled infrastructure, and the market name is being moved to match the purchase.

The radio was the rollout. The advanced version is the argument, and the argument is about who owns the intelligent network.

The September 2025 Magic Quadrant for CSP 5G RAN Infrastructure Solutions, and its two five-year Leaders

The edition under the old name published September 10, 2025, authored by Kosei Takiishi, Peter Liu, Sylvain Fabre, and Frank Marsala.

Two vendors have held the Leader rung for five consecutive years, and they hold opposite axes. Huawei is positioned at the highest point on Completeness of Vision, its fifth consecutive year as a Leader, with the AI-native RAN portfolio and 5G-Advanced standards leadership. Ericsson is positioned highest on Ability to Execute, also its fifth consecutive year, on the Ericsson Radio System, Cloud RAN, massive MIMO radios, and AI-powered RAN software.

Five consecutive years each, on opposite axes. The market's two giants have settled into a stable duopoly of strengths, and the transition name is the first thing to challenge it.

Huawei's vision, Ericsson's execution

The axis split is the market's geography in miniature.

Huawei leads on vision: the furthest-out roadmap, the AI-native architecture, and the scale of deployments across China, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Its constraint is the geopolitical one, market access limits in parts of Europe and North America, which the adjacent 5G Core quadrant's cautions state plainly.

Ericsson leads on execution: the commercial machine, the install base, the software that operators trust to run. Its constraint is the inverse, vision leadership in a market whose next phase is defined by the roadmap.

Geopolitics is now a placement variable, and the axis split is what the market looks like when it is.

The new entrants the transition invites

The 2025 edition contained the category's most significant new entry in years: Viettel, the Vietnamese group, became the first Vietnamese vendor included in the quadrant, recognized for its 5G RAN radio access solutions.

The significance is structural. A national champion entering a market defined for a decade by three global giants says the equipment market is opening at the edges, driven by sovereignty concerns and price, and the transition to the wider 5G-Advanced frame will invite more of the same. The Peer Insights vendor field under the transitioning name already lists the challengers: Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC with Open vRAN, Mavenir, Samsung, Fujitsu, MTI, and AsiaInfo.

What 5G-Advanced adds to the criteria

The new name is not cosmetic; it carries a standards generation. 5G-Advanced, the 3GPP Release 18 lineage, is where the RAN stops being a pipe: AI-native air interface optimization, energy efficiency at the cell level, and the positioning and sensing capabilities that enable new enterprise services.

The scoring implications are direct. A vendor that led the 5G era on radio performance will be re-scored on AI-native capability, and the two five-year Leaders' axis split previews the contest: Huawei's vision already leans into AI-native architecture, and Ericsson's execution machine now has to ship it at operator scale.

The upgrade has to be sold twice: once to the operator's balance sheet, once to the analyst's scorecard.

The core next door

The adjacent scorecard sharpens the picture. The Magic Quadrant for CSP 5G Core Network Infrastructure Solutions, published September 23, 2025, runs the same market logic one layer deeper: Huawei as the technological leader with explicitly stated geopolitical cautions, and Jio Platforms as a Niche Player running India's largest 5G standalone network, 170 million subscribers, with cautions about limited global track record.

Read the RAN and Core quadrants together and the market's shape is consistent: capability concentrated in a duopoly, access fragmented by geopolitics, and challengers entering at the edges through scale and sovereignty. The transition name simply extends that shape to the full network infrastructure.

Four questions for the operator buyer

Which release is the purchase actually for? The 5G RAN scorecard and the 5G-Advanced market are different buys. Ask the vendor which generation its roadmap is priced against.

Is the AI-native claim architectural or cosmetic? The new criteria will score the difference. Ask where the AI runs, in the radio, in the software, and what it optimizes in production.

What does the geopolitical exposure mean for the deployment? The cautions are printed in the adjacent quadrant. Model the supply, support, and sanction exposure before the RFP, not after.

Who owns the infrastructure beyond the radio? The transition name widens the frame. Ask how the vendor's transport, edge, and management story fits the 5G-Advanced deployment, because the radio-only answer is the old category's answer.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

The same shift shows up next door, in CSP AI-enabled Revenue Management Solutions. The billing and fraud half of a split telecom AI market is scheduled for its own Magic Quadrant around August 2026, and its draft criteria already require compliance with the EU AI Act.