Market Trends of Telecom Service Assurance Industry
Network Management System Expected to Witness Significant Growth
- Network reliability and security are paramount for seamless service delivery in today's interconnected telecom landscape. Network assurance, a critical tool for telecom companies, ensures networks operate while meeting stringent security standards.
- Network management equips CSPs with vital performance and fault information, ensuring smooth network operations. These systems swiftly collect, analyze, and distribute network events, aiding in fault resolution. Service management solutions then cross-verify this data against service guarantees and customer-specific SLAs, ensuring the desired quality of service.
- Network-based analytics play a pivotal role in meeting service assurance needs. These analytics can map application patterns across protocols and correlate them with network data paths. For instance, Cisco's network assurance engine employs formal verification techniques, leveraging data collection, network modeling, and intelligent analysis to ensure network correctness, even during reconfigurations.
- According to the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, as of the third quarter of 2023, 121 mobile network operators globally were investing in 5G standalone (5G SA) infrastructure for public networks, up from 115 the previous year. 5G SA networks do not rely on existing 4G infrastructure.
- Kentik's network observability cloud leverages a big data architecture, offering significant advantages in service assurance analytics. This architecture handles vast data volumes and enables network operations staff to swiftly navigate and explore the data, enhancing their analytics capabilities.
- Multi-site monitoring emerges as a prominent trend in network management. For instance, VMware's Telco Cloud Service Assurance allows DISH Wireless NOC to monitor and analyze data from over 20,000 cell sites. This setup enables rapid problem detection, with the NOC team promptly alerted by the VMware service, facilitating swift corrective actions and ensuring network integrity.
- Next-generation network assurance transcends mere service uptime maintenance. It proactively identifies faults, resolves issues swiftly, and optimizes network performance. In March 2024, ServiceNow deepened its collaboration with NVIDIA, focusing on delivering industry-specific GenAI for telcos. Their initial offering, Now Assist for Telecommunications Service Management (TSM), harnesses NVIDIA AI on the Now Platform, streamlining AI-driven and automated processes, especially in critical telco use cases like network management assurance.
North America Holds Significant Market Share
- Given the rapid technological progress and widespread adoption in countries such as the United States and Canada, North America is expected to experience a significant increase in the telecom service assurance market. The number of mobile cellular subscriptions has been rising exponentially over the last few years owing to technological advancements by OEMs and consumer interest in newer and more advanced handsets.
- The region is witnessing a rising demand for telecom service assurance solutions owing to the increasing adoption of 5G networks and network complexity, customers' growing need for high-quality, reliable, and consistent network services, and the growth in the number of cellular subscribers in the region.
- The growth of 5G networks in North America is a driving force for developing the market studied throughout the region. 5G offers ultra-fast speeds, significantly lower latency, and increased capacity, allowing transformative technologies like augmented reality, IoT, and autonomous vehicles. This expansion is driving demand for improvements in infrastructure and services to meet the growing number of devices and data-intensive applications.
- The development of Open RAN is expected to fuel the market's growth as it is a more complex network architecture compared to traditional, vendor-specific RAN solutions. This complexity arises from integrating components from different vendors, which requires comprehensive service assurance capabilities to monitor, manage, and optimize the entire network's performance effectively.
- The region is witnessing a continued investment of players in open radio access networks (Open RAN). For instance, in December 2023, AT&T partnered with Ericsson to lead the United States in commercial-scale open radio access network (Open RAN) deployment. The partnership may boost the telecommunications industry's efforts and help build a more robust ecosystem of network infrastructure providers and suppliers. This advanced open management approach to building the network may enable the company to continue to invest in its fast-growing broadband network.
- According to Ericsson, North America's 5G mobile subscriptions are expected to grow from 260.40 million in 2023 to 420.04 million by 2029. The rise in mobile subscriptions depicts the growing usage of networks across various applications, such as mobile banking and healthcare. Any network downtime or performance degradation may have significant consequences, highlighting the need for service assurance.