In the forward channel of a networked control system (NCS), by defining the network states as a hidden Markov chain and quantizing the network-induced delays to a discrete sequence distributing over a finite time interval, the relation between the network states and the network-induced delays is modelled as a discrete-time hidden Markov model (DTHMM). The expectation maximization (EM) algorithm is introduced to derive the maximumlikelihood estimation (MLE) of the parameters of the DTHMM.Based on the derived DTHMM, the Viterbi algorithm is introduced to predict the controller-to-actuator (C-A) delay during the current sampling period. The simulation experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the modelling and predicting methods proposed.