While 72% of communication service providers of all sizes have pledged their commitment to SDN, NFV or both, a slight majority plan on implementing NFV first, according to a survey.
Heavy Reading's SDN/NFV Tracker Survey found that 31% of the operators in the survey planned on deploying SDN and NFV at the same time, but 24% said they would go with NFV first compared to the 17% that planned to start with SDN.
The investment in NFV will be led by the virtualization of mobile network functions, which will grow from $11.8 billion in 2020, up from the current base of $2 billion.
The growth of NFV in fixed networks was projected to reach almost $3.9 billion by 2020. Beyond 2020, the Heavy Reading survey said there was potential for stronger wireless growth as the market moves to adopt Cloud RAN on a large commercial scale. SDN growth will start to ramp up in 2018.
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation