Mobile operators are competing to add capacity and services quickly, yet are finding that their traditional hardware-based architectures make this endeavor too expensive and time-consuming. By moving to a virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC), operators can quickly react to market changes, reduce backhaul costs, and reduce services time to market by simplifying deployment, interoperability, and optimization.
A recent IDC study shows that virtualizing the entire set of EPC functions enables the mobile network infrastructure to operate at a higher utilization rate of up to 87%, resulting in opex cost efficiencies of up to 25%. The study also shows that factors such as the extent of network virtualization and control/user plane separation–driven architectures can result in potential opex cost savings in the range of 20 to 40% over a five-year period.