Global MEC investment forecasts fall sharply in the next five years, with a drop of 39%

According to the latest report released by the market research company Dell’Oro Group, by 2025, multi-access edge computing (MEC) is expected to reduce investment by nearly 39%.

According to the latest report released by the market research company Dell’Oro Group, by 2025, multi-access edge computing (MEC) is expected to reduce investment by nearly 39%. The MEC market lacks vitality, and the development of independent 5G networks for operators is slow.

"The cumulative investment in the MEC field over the past five years is expected to reach 11 billion U.S. dollars," said David Bolan, head of research at Dell’Oro Group. The research company released a forecast six months ago with a cumulative investment of US$18 billion.

Bolan explained: "The biggest factor leading to the lower forecast is the slow start of 5G SAs other than China."

Currently, less than 10% of 5G networks in the world are independent 5GCs. Most 5G services are still based on 4G LTE.

Bolan added that part of the reason for this delay may be because 5G service providers are investigating the role that public cloud service providers can play in their networks.

MEC standards are not yet fully mature

Bolan said that the development of MEC networking specification requirements is slow, and ETSI and other global telecommunications standards organizations are working hard, which may also affect the deployment of 5GC. This is crucial to the development of MEC.

"Although MEC can be used for 4G and 5G at the same time, the 4G network needs to be upgraded to separate the control plane from the user plane. This is an inherent feature of 5G," Bolan said. "Another inherent feature of 5G is low latency. Although there will be some 4G MECs in the forecast, most of them are based on 5G SA MECs to fully realize their full potential."

Dell’Oro Group predicts that most of the MEC investment will still be completed in the next five years, and it is estimated that 60% of the revenue will be realized in 2025. By then, MEC standards, technologies and business cases will mature.