Hi,
for sure if the network does not start the ciphering procedure at all, you have a relief of your signaling load, of course.
But if you apply the ciphering procedure with value=”no_ciphering”, the only difference is that you have no ciphering on the radio inreface.
In fact the ciphering is applied by MS and BTS.
And the ciphering algorithms are quite simple ususally.
So there is a little effort and for MS and BTS only in this second case.
Federico