In 2017, the total DSC market (product + service revenue) grew 29% to approach $1 billion. The market grew 33% in 2016 and we expect that the market will grow by an average of 20% per year through 2022. Supporting this growth is the fact that VoLTE penetration is still quite low and diameter signaling demand will rise as VoLTE penetration rises. At the end of 2017, less than one-quarter total LTE subscriptions and less than 10% of total subscriptions, employed VoLTE. Moreover, LTE still comprises just one-third of total subscriptions.

We expect that the 5G signaling market will begin in 2020 or 2021 with the substantially equal periodic payments (SEPP), which will sit at the edge of networks and function like the diameter edge agent (DEA) of today and an HTTP2 proxy type of product that will provide session binding, protocol normalization, congestion control, and other features akin to today’s diameter routing agent (DRA).

The market leaders for the DSC market in 2017 were: Huawei, Oracle, and Ericsson.