According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, Evolved Packet Core (EPC) revenues hit a record level for 2017.
Ericsson maintained the top market ranking for the seventh year running, followed by Huawei and Nokia.
“Fourth quarter 2017 resulted in the largest quarter in history for EPC market sales,” said David Bolan, Senior Analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “Other than Huawei – who experienced weakness in China – all major vendors experienced a strong fourth quarter. The growth was primarily driven by Tier 1 operators, especially in North America, preparing their EPC to carry 5G traffic over the 4G infrastructure. This was due to the EPC standard being updated in June 2017.”
Bolan continued to state that “The EPC market will hit another all-time high in 2018 with the additional factors:
Operators have to add new capacity to handle data growth with the advent of more unlimited data plans around the world. VoLTE is becoming a standard service offering – as opposed to a premium service – in Europe which also requires new capacity.
Service Providers in China, Japan, Korea, and the Nordic countries will join North America in preparing their EPC for 5G Non-standalone launches in 2019.”
