With telecoms operators in Asia Pacific actively virtualizing network architecture, network function virtualization (NFV) market revenue in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at 51.4% CAGR over next five years to hit $9.24 billion in 2022, according to a report by ABI Research.
Japan is the largest single market within the region, constituting 25.7% of the total revenue. South Korea and China are the second and third largest markets with 22.7% and 14.6%, respectively.
“Japan leads in the region, not only because of the desire to design resilient and reliable networks in preparation for future disaster threats, but also to prepare for the 2020 Summer Olympics,” said Lian Jye Su, senior analyst at ABI Research. “South Korea and China are actively preparing for 5G, which requires both cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) and cloud core networks.”
Tier 2 telcos such as Banglalink and Ncell are also catching up, deploying virtual subscriber data management platforms.
ABI said the industry has long agreed that there is no single approach to NFV and the latest market developments demonstrate just that.
For instance, SK Telecom has recently launched T-MANO, its own network function virtualization management and orchestration (MANO) platform.
By contrast, major Chinese telecoms operators - namely China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom - have opted to collaborate with large number of vendors and other telcos in ONAP to develop a common MANO platform.
Telcos in China aim to become the catalyst for the government's “Made in China 2025” strategy. Through their NFV initiatives, ABI said, Chinese telcos can empower local industrial players with new capabilities, such as multi-access edge computing, massive machine type communications, dynamic cloud services and vehicle-to-everything communications.
“That is why the recent NFV interoperability test between Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia are important. Such collaboration allows telcos to truly embrace the multi-vendor NFV deployment and benefit from the open source nature of NFV,” noted Su.
“We believe that virtualized network function onboarding, interoperability testing, and lifecycle management are becoming the new focus of the industry, as telcos seek to leverage the strengths of different hardware and software vendors.”