Smarter Network Management, Traffic Control, and User Experience to Bring the Real Value of 5G

While the industry is already talking up 6G, the more immediate challenge for telecom operators is still how to unlock the full value of existing 5G infrastructure. That is the central point made by Ognjen Vukoslavović, member of the Management Board and Chief Technology and Information Officer at Hrvatski Telekom, who argues that 5G in Croatia and across Europe has yet to reach the level of maturity many expected by now. The conversation is no longer just about adding coverage or deploying new radio sites. It is increasingly about optimisation, capacity, energy efficiency, and managing traffic growth in a far more intelligent way.

As Vukoslavović explains, network development is taking place against the backdrop of relentless growth in data demand, with streaming, TV services, cloud applications, and emerging AI workloads driving much of the pressure. “5G has not reached the maximum it was expected to reach in the past few years,” he says, adding that operators are therefore “primarily focused on a series of optimisation activities and on increasing capacity, especially in areas where that capacity is needed most”. At the same time, energy efficiency is becoming a core part of the equation, turning network engineering into a balance between performance, cost, and sustainability.

In his view, one of the clearest and most commercially relevant 5G use cases so far is fixed wireless access. “At this moment, the main hero is fixed wireless access, especially for rural areas where fibre infrastructure is not currently available,” Vukoslavović says. In that context, 5G is no longer simply an upgrade of the mobile network. It becomes a practical way to extend broadband availability where fibre rollout is slower, more difficult, or less economically viable. By contrast, he sees 6G as still being in an early phase. “It is difficult for me to say, it is still only in a standardisation stage,” he notes, while also pointing to the role artificial intelligence is likely to play in future network generations.

The structural foundation of all this remains fibre. Vukoslavović stresses that optical infrastructure is the base that supports the growth of both fixed and mobile services, as well as rising demand from data centres and digital platforms. “Our focus is on optical infrastructure,” he says, noting that the network currently reaches “more than 870,000 households through a combination of our own fibre and a high-capacity cable network”. He also underlines the strategic role of intercity fibre links, which connect major cities and regional centres while placing Croatia within a broader regional transport backbone linking southeastern Europe with central European hubs.

That kind of environment can no longer be managed with traditional operating models. As traffic rises and peak loads become sharper, manual optimisation is no longer enough. “Today, this would not be possible without tools,” Vukoslavović says. He adds that “there is no longer that amount of workforce that can optimise traffic through manual procedures”, which is why automation, proactive monitoring, and intelligent incident management are becoming indispensable. The operator has already implemented proactive systems in both cable and fibre environments, and is now working on automated radio optimisation, particularly for periods of heavy seasonal demand. “We are working on automated radio network optimisation, especially for the summer season,” he says, with the aim of “balancing traffic smartly between high-capacity 4G and 5G layers”.

A particularly important issue is 5G Standalone, the architecture widely described as the “real” 5G, but still progressing more slowly than the industry once anticipated. Vukoslavović is clear that this is a major investment area for which the market has yet to produce enough strong, monetisable use cases. “That is the brain of the 5G network,” he says of the standalone core, but immediately adds that “the difficult part in the investment cycle for most operators is that this is a very large investment in a segment where there are no real use cases yet”. That is why operators continue to move carefully. Even so, he expects momentum to build over the next two years, especially through “smarter ways of managing” traffic and services, including in IoT and in scenarios where the network will need to make increasingly autonomous and precise decisions.

Ultimately, the discussion comes back to what users actually notice. According to Vukoslavović, customers are no longer impressed by headline speed claims alone. What they increasingly demand is consistency, stability, and low latency. “Our users expect extremely consistent quality,” he says, explaining that they want “stable speed, a stable network, and low latency”. That is why the customer experience battle is not fought only in the radio and transport layers, but also in the home, through better terminal equipment and next-generation Wi-Fi. More than 65 per cent of customer terminals are already based on newer Wi-Fi standards, and Wi-Fi 7 has now also been introduced. For the wider industry, the message is clear: the next phase of telecom competition will not be defined only by coverage maps and peak speeds, but by the ability to turn rising traffic, new AI-driven usage patterns, and higher customer expectations into stable, automated, and economically sustainable networks.