The Telecom market of today is changing at a very fast rate as the expectations of the consumer keep on changing. The Communication Service Providers have to ensure that they keep on innovating and bringing new services to match the expectations of the consumer. However, the traditional methods do not allow agility & hence to become agile, communication service providers are embracing the concept of uCPE & vCPE.
Traditionally, services such as routing, firewall, security, SD-WAN and WAN optimization have been built in such a way that they have to be delivered via dedicated, purpose built physical network appliances deployed at different sites. These services will now be delivered by the vCPE & uCPE via the medium of Network Functions Virtualization.
As per IHS Markit, less 600 units of uCPE were shipped in 2016 whose use was mostly for lab testing and trials. 2017 was the initial takeoff year where almost around 7,000 units shipped. However, a heavy ramp has been expected from 2018 onward.
It is further forecasted by the industry experts that near about 415,000 units will ship in 2021.
IDC has predicted that the market for vCPE & uCPE (both hardware & software components) will exceed $3 billion by 2021. In terms of the software market for vCPE, IDC has forecasted an increase in the market size upto to $3 billion by as compared to $145.7 million in 2016 (Compound annual growth rate of 68.3 percent.)
The combined hardware market for both vCPE & uCPE has been further predicted to grow from from $27 million in 2017 to $457 million by 2021.
According to estimated sources, the majority of the sales for vCPE/uCPE units took place in the North American Region followed by Asia Pacific, Europe & Africa respectively. The market currently has very few leading players in it but there are a lot of enterprises trying to enter into it owing to the massive growth opportunity that lies in the market.
The vCPE/uCPE market is on a rise & is escalating with time. The virtual customer premises equipment vCPE market will witness a positive outlook during the future & will bring disruptive results to the market in terms of advancement as well as in terms of revenue for the service providers.
