As data volumes burgeon with the growth of 5G and data-intensive use cases and applications, some operators are eliminating passive monitoring of the user plane to cut costs. But that can lead to bigger issues further down the line. What’s the solution?

Operators are making a quiet trade-off: cutting passive monitoring of the user plane to manage costs. On paper and from a cost perspective it makes perfect sense: 5G data volumes are growing significantly, which means the capacity required by passive monitoring solutions for the user plane is growing in lockstep.

As a result, it’s becoming significantly more expensive to both maintain and evolve. So, eliminating investment in user plane passive monitoring solutions can be seen by operators as a way to cut costs.

But if you do take that step, how can you still obtain the assurance you need to protect services, SLAs and customer experiences?

5G and data volumes are growing rapidly - putting pressure on user plane monitoring budgets

The June 2026 Ericsson Mobility Report forecasts notes that the share of mobile data traffic carried over 5G increased during 2025 alone from 34% to 48% – the largest net annual increase ever recorded. It then predicts that the 5G mobile data share will reach 85% by 2031, representing a 17% CAGR over the six-year period.

According to Ericsson, the amount of mobile data traffic grew from 146 exabytes (EB) per month at the beginning of 2025 and grew to 203 EB per month by the end of the year. It projects that it will reach 328 EB per month by 2031 – a growth rate of over double from the beginning of 2025 to 2031.

However, the rise of new use cases, such as AR, VR, Gen AI, and more, could drive those projections beyond current forecasts. At the same time, more sophisticated devices and data-intensive applications are increasingly required by end users.

The imperative for comprehensive monitoring of the user plane

As we know, the control plane is responsible for signalling (controlling session setup and management, while the user plane controls the subscriber experience across voice, data, video, and so on). The two are not necessarily always neatly aligned.

For example, it is possible that a voice call can be set up perfectly but may still deliver poor audio. A session can be established but may still deliver degraded throughput. SLAs, churn, subscriber satisfaction, and more are not determined only by what happens in the control plane: what the subscriber actually experiences happens in the user plane.

So, while control plane indicators can look green and as expected, the user plane could be silently degrading and issues may be occurring in parallel in the user plane – for example, intermittent buffering.

But, the growth of mobile data volume is increasing faster than monitoring budgets can keep pace. That’s because securing the capacity to passively ingest and inspect all user plane data means you need more monitoring infrastructure – which can rapidly scale and consume more capital.

What’s more, increasing volumes of traffic are encrypted, so the actual traffic may not be available for inspection at all. Sure, DPI can help, but even that can’t access session content and carries its own costs.

All this means that comprehensive passive monitoring of the user plane – capturing and analysing all traffic – is becoming cost-prohibitive at scale. As a result, many operators are quietly reducing or eliminating user plane passive monitoring to cut costs.

However, reducing investment in user plane monitoring could mean that issues only surface when subscribers complain. Unfortunately, by then the damage to reputation is already done.

As a result, removing passive user plane monitoring solutions could create blind spots – actual degradations in the network can go undetected, while you don’t have data to use to reproduce, diagnose or isolate issues. However, you still have passive control plane monitoring – which scales more cost-effectively.

The power of the combination of passive control plane and active monitoring

There is an alternative.

Active monitoring can restore user plane visibility at a fraction of the cost of passive monitoring. Active monitoring deploys software agents that generate synthetic traffic continuously in the live network, mimicking real users under any scenario – and directly measuring the resulting experiences.

Because active monitoring generates targeted, controlled sessions rather than capturing all traffic, it provides user plane assurance at significantly lower cost than full passive monitoring. It’s proactive by nature, meaning that it discovers issues before subscribers are affected – not after users have complained about issues that have not been detected.

So, while it may be judicious to cease investment in passive monitoring of the user plane, in practice, budgets can be used more wisely by adding active monitoring of control and user plane with passive monitoring of the control plane to deliver the best of both worlds.

Your passive control plane monitoring will remain in place – that’s much more cost effective, even though it too has to scale to support the growth in session volume. But, the cost impact is significantly less. This will continue to give you insights and information from your live networks.

At the same time, you deploy continuous active monitoring solutions for both user and control plane, so you can model and pre-empt issues that have yet to occur, but in a controlled manner so you can investigate issues.

This means you can remove passive user plane monitoring infrastructure, while retaining control plane capabilities, together with the more cost-effective investment in active monitoring.

With such rapidly growing data traffic volumes, the most powerful way to assure user plane performance to meet SLAs and user QoE expectations is to use a combination of active monitoring of both control and user plane, together with passive monitoring of the control plane.

This approach allows you to remove user plane passive monitoring – and reduces the risk of doing so.

In our next article, the second in a two-part series on monitoring the user plane, we will explore the benefits of using this combination in more detail.

But if you want to learn more in the meantime, contact our team, or visit our service assurance insights at https://emblasoft.com/solution/service-assurance.