Providers must act now to create network opportunities, by launching news services rapidly on more agile infrastructure and supporting traffic growth with new customers. ­­­An optimized core network solution, provided through the implementation of NFV is exactly what will help service providers reduce total cost of ownership and be ready for the next evolution of wireless to drive new incremental service revenue.

To Virtualize or Not to Virtualize, That is The Question

The economics of virtualizing a network remains complex and deployment does not necessarily translate into immediate return on investment, but successfully navigating network transformation, promises to provide the industry with low-cost elastic scale, service agility and a flattening of capital expenditure and operating expense.

In theory, the benefits simply associated with operational expenditure including reduced data center costs, should form a strong enough case to make the initial investment toward virtualization. Without these technologies, it is impossible to have viable operational expenditure for introducing new services, adapting and terminating. Through NFV, providers can evolve past software and hardware environments to data centers with heterogeneous infrastructure. Beyond that, the increased flexibility of the network will help to transform the operational business side for network providers.

The elasticity associated with virtualization will also afford networks and their providers the ability to adapt to the market. Future consumer behavioral changes, whether associated with an even greater demand on data or future trends associated with 5G advancements, will also be quickly accounted for with this implementation. Consumer behaviors will always be changing and evolving so it is important for providers to employ advancements that not only adjust for current trends but can also be quickly changed and adjusted for future expectations, which will most certainly include increased demands in mobile data.

What Now?

Recent research by SNS Research predicts the NFV market will reach nearly $21 billion by 2020. The new capabilities available on the network for subscribers places the networks in a much more competitive advantage. Not only will subscribers benefit from advancements in the scale of the network, whether it relates to increases in data or messaging, but initial cost savings to providers can of course be passed down. Mobile network operators can no longer have one-size-fits-all network but need to have ability to have many networks, each tuned to optimize specific experiences/use cases. These networks need to be instantiated and scaled on demand. This requires software defined network and virtualization – NFV+SDN+SON. Only with this can virtualization of networks help increase customer retention.