5G Mobile Core Disruptors: Competitive Landscape Assessment

Mobile operators are modernizing their infrastructures to capture revenue from higher speed eMBB, leverage fixed wireless access (FWA) and deploy CBRS (in the US), to better compete with fixed broadband and provide a better experience for their wireless customers.

Capturing high-value enterprise services (B2B) is also a priority; for many operators, it's a way to offset static or declining connectivity revenues with higher ARPU services. Cloud-based deployments are also providing operators with significant flexibility and cost savings.

The private network market is expanding, driven by many legacy infrastructures reaching end-of-life and needing a technology refresh; this opens the door to innovative 5G solutions that can be flexible and adapt to challenging requirements (edge-based deployments, environmental hardening) and the need for remote management and monitoring (automation and artificial intelligence).

This GlobalData report by Glen Hunt includes sections on buying criteria, vendor recommendations, and ratings for the top four companies in the 5G mobile core market.

Affirmed Networks’ Ratings

Affirmed’s UnityCloud 5G core solution addresses the current and future requirements of 5G networks. The solution is built on a cloud-native, microservices architecture and improves network economics by providing an NFVI agnostic architecture with the lowest TCO.

UnityCloud follows 3GPP standards and uses open-source components for its PaaS layer, which is integrated and automated to help operators respond to changing market needs. UnityCloud provides an operations and policy manager (OPM) that automates, creates policies, and can run services wherever needed to meet the customer and service delivery needs.

Affirmed has emerged as the industry leader in four out of seven categories.

• Management and Automation Features-Tools— Leader
• Market Momentum—Leader
• Performance and Carrier-Grade Features—Very Strong
• Service and Support—Very Strong
• Solution Architecture—Leader
• Supported Access Technologies—Very Strong
• Product Scores—Leader