Ericsson and Huawei are the early overall leaders on 5G mobile core infrastructure, according to a competitive assessment of the market by GlobalData. The firm conducted a detailed examination of 5G mobile core portfolios with a special focus on architecture, market momentum, standards and leadership, support for voice and video, 5G services, migration to 5G, and automation.

GlobalData put Huawei and Ericsson at the top of the pack. It ranked Huawei as a leader across all of the criteria and gave the Chinese vendor “especially high marks for its leading number of mobile core contracts and for its NFV OpenLab initiative.”

That assessment follows a previous study on 5G radio access network (RAN) portfolios wherein Huawei was also determined to hold the strongest position overall by GlobalData in June.

Ericsson earned a co-leadership position on 5G mobile core infrastructure due to its mobile core contracts, non-standalone (NSA) deployments and early standalone (SA) trials, its full stack, and leadership on standards, according to GlobalData. During the summer, Ericsson and Verizon conducted a proof-of-concept trial that resulted in the first deployment of a cloud-native technology running on a live 4G LTE mobile core, but the companies described the effort as an opportunity to showcase the architecture of the operator’s forthcoming 5G core.

The initial deployments of 5G are on NSA mode, which means operators are relying on the 4G core to deliver early use cases around higher bandwidth and lower latency. The 5G core comes in at the “next level then to really enable what we built 5G for,” which includes connecting things, networking slicing, and other resource-based use cases, Fredrik Jejdling, executive vice president and head of business area networks at Ericsson, told SDxCentral last week at MWC Los Angeles 2019.

“There’s different architecture than the old 4G core. There will be a lot better flexibility on distributing use cases,” he said. That 5G core provides its own merits when operators can connect devices directly to the 5G core, including better performance and improved quality, he added.

“I would say 2020 would be a really good year for that. It requires, of course, a lot of different core migrations from one core to another. I don’t underestimate that, it’s a big undertaking, but from the broader access-network perspective it’s a software-level upgrade so the radios and the baseband can handle both standalone and non-standalone.”

Ultimately, 5G core deployments will unlock the true benefits of 5G and facilitate the rollout of new services, Jejdling said. Early 5G core efforts will occur first in the same markets that launched 5G early, including operators in the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and China, he said.

Nokia, ZTE, and Cisco each received “very strong” marks in GlobalData’s mobile 5G core review. The firm applauded Nokia for supporting operator lifecycle management through the transition to 5G, early SA trials, and multiple 5G migration services. ZTE was called out for its strengths in converged core support for LTE and 5G New Radio (NR), artificial intelligence, automation, and service assurance. Finally, Cisco was lauded by GlobalData for its “leadership in early adoption of cloud-native technologies and support for multi-vendor interoperability.”

The firm noted that the 5G mobile core market is entering a commercialization phase and vendor portfolios are rapidly evolving. “The gap that distinguishes leaders from the rest of the pack is very small, and the market is likely to evolve significantly over the next several years,” wrote Glen Hunt, principal analyst at GlobalData. He added that operators’ 5G mobile core decisions will directly impact the trajectory of global telecom investments for the next decade.

“In the race to win 5G deals with operators, each vendor has a strong advantage with operators that already use their 4G mobile core solutions,” Hunt wrote. “We expect the standalone 5G mobile core market will start ramping up in 2020 following the latest specifications from 3GPP."