Dave Bolan research director at Dell’Oro told RCR Wireless News that the research firm projects the 5G MCN market to account for more than 50% of the market this year
In sum – what to know:
MCN revenues up 15% – The market recorded its strongest annual growth rate since 2014, with gains across 4G, 5G, and voice core segments.
5G core hits 50% share – 5G MCN accounted for half of total market revenues for the first time in 2025.
MEC and AI reshape outlook – Edge computing led segment growth, while agentic AI could drive future capacity and monetization changes.
The global mobile core network (MCN) market returned to growth in 2025, with revenues increasing 15% year-over-year, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.
For the first time, 5G MCN represented 50% of total MCN market revenues, according to the report.
“In 2025, the MCN market recorded its highest year-over-year revenue growth rate since 2014,” Dave Bolan, research director at Dell’Oro Group, said in a release. “This was driven by record-setting growth rates in all market segments: 4G MCN, 5G MCN, and voice core. 4G MCN gains came from Caribbean and Latin America (CALA) and Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) regions; 5G MCN from all regions; and voice core, primarily from Asia Pacific and EMEA regions.”
The report also found that the four largest vendors — Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE — all recorded strong growth in 2025 and maintained a similar combined market share to the previous year.
Multi-access edge computing (MEC), a subsegment of the 5G MCN market, posted the fastest growth rate among MCN categories, with China remaining the leading region for deployments.
The report notes ongoing collaboration among standards bodies, vendors and mobile operators to expand the 5G ecosystem. Developments include RedCap radios aimed at lowering IoT device costs, network slicing for mission-critical and on-demand use cases, IMS data channels to support new monetization models, and Open APIs designed to help developers scale services across multiple operators.
Dell’Oro also highlighted the potential long-term impact of agentic AI, which could reshape traffic patterns and increase the time subscribers remain connected to networks. This shift may require additional core capacity while creating new monetization opportunities for operators. “We believe agentic AI will have an impact on the core network requiring more capacity over the next three to five years. The size of impact is still to be determined,” Bolan told RCR Wireless News.
Bolan also said that Dell’Oro projects the 5G MCN market to account for more than 50% of the market this year. “The MCN market is seeing a cyclical rebound, and we do not project growth rates as high as we saw in 2025. However, the 5G MCN market growth rate will be healthy going forward for the next several years,” Bolan added.
