Leveraging SDN/NFV as key stepping stones to the 5G era in emerging markets

The proliferation of mobile devices and the advent of bandwidth hungry applications are expected to drastically increase in the foreseeable future. This growing trend has been the key motive behind the development of the 5G standard. SG is envisaged to cater for this rapid growth in user traffic, while providing ubiquitous connectivity for any kind of device and diverse applications with different requirements. However for SG to be deemed the "silver bullet" technology, it needs to be studied in the context of emerging markets, where there is limited infrastructure to satisfy the requirements of 5G. Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) have emerged as promising paradigms that can be adopted to pave the way for SG in emerging markets. In this paper we give an overview of the roles of SDN and NFV in enabling 5G technology specifically for emerging markets and propose a model for rapid rural infrastructure rollout thereof.