Communication service providers' growing interest in planning and deploying virtualized networks is reflected in the increased spending on those projects, according to a report.
The Heavy Reading report tracked communications service providers' progress in deploying virtualization technologies across their networks. The first infographic in this series focused on communication service providers' planning index while the second looked at the deployment phase. This final installment looks at their spending index. (See The Future of Virtualization: Deployment Phase and The Future of Virtualization: NFV Rising.)
Overall, virtualization accounted for a larger piece of service providers' capex budgets this year than in the previous report in 2016, with some (40%) expecting spending on virtualization to increase slightly next year. The majority of the CSPs in the survey didn't expect their capex budgets to level off or start to decline until 2020 or later.
Among the 40 CSPs that were surveyed for Heavy Reading's "The Force (Finally) Awakens" report, there was more overall confidence in meeting timetables for testing and deploying high-priority network functions this year than in 2016.
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation