Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) revenues grew to 16 percent of the VoLTE market in Q1 2018, according to a research report from Dell’Oro Group.

Nokia is the number one vendor in the global VoLTE market, and the NFV sub-segment. Ericsson is number two vendor in VoLTE and NFV sub-segment.

NFV is the fasted growing sub-segment in VoLTE and is expected to account for more than 30 percent of the market one year from now. Cisco, Huawei, Mavenir, Metaswitch, Oracle and ZTE are some of the other VoLTE vendors.

“Service providers are implementing cloud-native virtual network functions in preparation for 5G,” said David Bolan, senior analyst at Dell’Oro Group.

Preparing for 5G network is a tipping point for the move to cloud-based architectures, and cloud-native NFV solutions are imperative for service providers to be able to deliver on the promises of new services in 5G.

In addition to US, countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, Scandinavia, and the Middle East are spending on NFV.