The MCN market revenue in China declined 39% year-on-year in Q3 2025 following an abnormally high growth in Q3 2024
In sum – what to know:
MCN revenue grew 14% outside China – Gains across all regions except China offset a sharp 39% decline there, resulting in a small 2% global dip.
5G SA momentum continues among 72 operators – Network slicing rollouts and new enterprise-oriented MPN services signal growing efforts to monetize standalone deployments.
Twelve operators have launched 5G-A – Early commercial rollouts are emerging across Asia, the Middle East, Australia and the U.S. as operators shift into next-generation feature upgrades.
Mobile core network (MCN) revenue grew 14% year-over-year outside China in the third quarter of 2025, according to new data from Dell’Oro Group.
“The Chinese market experienced abnormally high growth in the third quarter of 2024. As a result, the China market revenue declined 39% year-on-year for Q3 2025,” said Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group. “Revenue across all other regions increased between 9-17% year-on-year, resulting in a worldwide revenue decline of 2% year-on-year. As noted, revenue worldwide excluding China rose 14% year-on-year, continuing the trend of subscribers migrating to 5G Standalone, and revenue worldwide excluding North America declined 5% year-on-year.”
Bolan noted that 72 MNOs are now progressing with 5G SA and exploring new monetization models. Network slicing activity continued, including Reliance Jio’s deployment of 10 guaranteed-SLA slices at scale. In October, T-Mobile introduced Edge Control, which Dell’Oro describes as an operator-delivered mobile private network (MPN), addressing hurdles enterprises face when building 5G SA private networks using shared CBRS spectrum in the U.S.
Dell’Oro has also identified 12 operators that have commercially launched 5G-Advanced, with deployments spanning China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, CTM (Macau), Du (UAE), e& (UAE), HKT (Hong Kong), Singtel (Singapore), Telstra (Australia), T-Mobile (USA), YTL (Malaysia), and Zain (Kuwait).
Bolan told RCR Wireless News that more users are migrating to 5G SA as networks mature in terms of coverage, capacity, and features. “Over 50% of the world’s population now lives in countries with 5G SA coverage. We expect continued growth in 2026 outside China, but at a slower pace than in 2025,” he said.
“While 5G SA and 5G-Advanced are pretty successful in China for enterprise applications, what remains to be seen is the return on investment for enterprises. Programmable Network APIs promise app developers can scale their solutions across many MNOs more efficiently, reducing time-to-market, and RedCap can lower the cost of IoT devices; these are steps the industry is taking in the right direction,” Bolan added.
The global 5G Mobile Core Network (MCN) market is projected to grow at a 6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2024 to 2029, according to previous forecast from Dell’Oro Group. The acceleration is largely attributed to the rising adoption of 5G Standalone (SA) architecture, which supports next-generation network capabilities.
