The global Mobile Core Network (MCN) market recorded a major rebound in 2025, with revenues rising 15 percent, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. The milestone year marked the fastest annual growth rate since 2014 and signaled a major shift toward 5G Standalone deployments and cloud-native network evolution.
For the first time, the 5G MCN segment reached a 50 percent share of the total mobile core network market, highlighting the accelerating transition from legacy infrastructure to next-generation core technologies.
5G Standalone reaches mass adoption phase
Dell’Oro said 2025 marked an inflection point for 5G Standalone (5G SA) networks as coverage expanded across urban, suburban and rural regions worldwide. The rapid rollout of 5G SA was the biggest driver of MCN revenue growth.
Research Director Dave Bolan said the market experienced record growth across all major segments:
4G MCN growth reached its highest level since 2019, driven mainly by Caribbean and Latin America and EMEA regions.
5G MCN recorded its strongest growth since 2022, supported by deployments across all regions.
Voice Core achieved its fastest expansion since 2007, fueled by 3G shutdowns and modernization initiatives.
The shift away from 3G networks is accelerating migration from Circuit Switched Core to IMS Core architectures, including cloud-native IMS deployments to support Voice over New Radio (VoNR) in 5G SA networks.
Top telecom vendors maintain market leadership
The report highlighted strong performance from the industry’s largest mobile core suppliers. Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and ZTE all posted robust growth in 2025 and collectively maintained a similar market share position compared with 2024.
Their continued dominance reflects ongoing investments by mobile network operators in upgrading core infrastructure and expanding 5G capabilities.
Edge computing emerges as fastest-growing segment
The Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) segment delivered the highest growth rate of any MCN category in 2025, according to the report. China remained the leading region for MEC deployments as operators expanded edge infrastructure to support low-latency applications and enterprise use cases.
Industry collaboration among standards bodies, vendors and mobile operators is helping expand the ecosystem with new products, services and monetization models.
Key innovation areas include:
RedCap radios to reduce IoT device costs for wearables and industrial applications
Network slicing for mission-critical and on-demand services
IMS data channels to improve user experience and create new revenue streams
Open APIs to attract developers and enable cross-operator application scaling
Agentic AI expected to reshape traffic and monetization
Dell’Oro said the rise of Agentic AI could fundamentally change mobile network traffic patterns. AI agents operating on behalf of users may increase the time subscribers remain connected to networks, creating new capacity requirements and monetization opportunities. This shift could drive higher MCN investments, expanded vendor opportunities and new pricing tiers for mobile operators as AI-driven services scale globally.
