5G Standalone network rollouts have reached a critical mass in market maturity with high population coverage in 40 countries, seeding the market for more subscribers to jump on the 5G Standalone networks, experiencing higher downlink and uplink speeds, and inherently lower latency provided by 5G SA, fueling the 5G MCN market.
The total MCN market low point in revenue was 2024, and the market is projected to reach a historic high in 2026, since the beginning of the 5G era in 2020. Besides more subscribers migrating to 5G SA networks, new applications are becoming more scalable with the advent of Common Network Programmable APIs. Enterprise applications are expected to rise, fueling demand for more MCN capacity, especially at the edge on enterprise premises.
Another factor that will boost growth is the growing use of agentic AI. As agents work in the background on behalf of subscribers 24/7, the demand for more MCN capacity will increase.
In addition, the Voice MCN market will reach new revenue highs in 2026. The low point for the Voice MCN market was 2023. Feeding the trend to higher revenues are more networks migrating from Circuit Switched Core to IMS Core. These are primarily located in countries where MNOs are modernizing their Voice Core in their 4G LTE networks. Recently, we have seen upgrades to 5G VoNR (Voice over New Radio), which utilize the IMS Core and a new generation of Cloud-Native IMS Cores, providing a more scalable and flexible network to support new services. Enhanced immersive and interactive voice calls are enabled in 5G VoNR networks, and the introduction of the IMS Data Channel will provide competitive features to over-the-top applications, utilizing the smartphone’s native dialer.
Even though the 4G MCN market will decline as more subscribers migrate to 5G SA, the rate of decline is decreasing, driven by subscriber growth in countries that do not yet have 5G SA. Some MNOs are sunsetting their 3G MCNs, which increases demand for 4G MCN capacity.
In summary, we expect continued revenue growth in MCNs in 2026 as more 5G SA networks come on line as more subscribers are added to existing 5G SA networks, the rise of more enterprise applications utilizing Common Network APIs, the growing use of Agentic AI, enhanced immersive and interactive calling for the Voice networks, and 4G network decline in growth rates are adding up to an all-time high in MCN revenues in 2026.
