Market research firm Dell'Oro Group has issued a new report in which it predicts mobile backhaul market revenues will approach $9 billion by 2015. The figure covers both transport, which includes microwave and optical equipment, and routers and switches, which includes cell site devices, Carrier Ethernet switches, and service provider edge routers.
Mobile broadband services will drive carrier spending on mobile backhaul equipment, Dell’Oro believes.
“We’re at the initial stage of the mobile broadband wave with only a few LTE deployments underway. As radio access networks across the globe get upgraded to newer mobile radio technologies like 4G LTE, availability of sufficient backhaul capacity will be a key enabler to customer experience. Our latest report indicates high-capacity optical and microwave deployments will have to maintain a growth curve to deliver the requisite backhaul capacity through 2015,” said Jimmy Yu, senior director of optical and microwave research at Dell’Oro Group.
“Our research has found that operators around the world are concerned with the rate of mobile traffic growth and are transitioning to Internet Protocol (IP) technologies to build a more efficient and scalable backhaul network,” added Shin Umeda, vice president of routers research at Dell’Oro Group. “Our latest report forecasts the demand for IP-based routers and switches will continue to grow through 2015, almost doubling the market size of the router and switches segment in the five-year forecast period.”
Routers and switches will compose 30% of the mobile backhaul market, Dell’Oro believes.