Infonetics report that mobile backhaul gear remains in high demand

The latest market share and forecast report by Infonetics Research stated that the market for mobile backhaul gear will continue to grow.

The biannual Infonetics report, Macrocell Mobile Backhaul Equipment and Services, ranks mobile backhauling equipment vendors, identifies areas of growth for the market, and analyzes equipment, connections, cell sites, and service charges. The report tracks companies worldwide and covers areas of interest such as market share, size, and forecasts, installed cell sites, and service charges.

The market for macrocell mobile backhaul equipment could look forward to slow but steady growth. Verizon Wireless and AT&T may not be buying any new mobile backhaul equipment since they are close to completing their first big wave of LTE deployments. But they're not the only buyers in a very large one with plenty of room for growth. Rising requirements for capacity have driven network operators outside of North America buy microwave gear for additional mobile backhauling capabilities.

The macrocell mobile backhaul equipment market is forecasted to grow to $9.7 billion in 2016. Infonetics further predicted that $43.6 billion worth of macrocell mobile backhaul equipment will be purchased from 2012 to 2016.

Microwave equipment accounts for more than half of all spending in the mobile backhauling market. Supporting this is the Infonetics report, which discovered that 94 % of total purchased macrocell mobile backhaul equipment are IP/Ethernet gear. And 54% of the IP/Ethernet gear are packet-capable microwave types.

According to Infonetics, revenue for Ethernet mobile backhauling router will probably peak in 2015. The build out of macrocell mobile backhaul is expected to subside during that year. From then on, companies will shift their focus to cheaper, easier to deploy small cells.

Ruckus Smart Mesh: Leveraging small cell mobile backhauling

Small cells are a new architectural approach to increase capacity of service provider networks. Essentially miniaturized base stations, they combine licensed and unlicensed radio technology with wireless backhaul. The result: Short-ranged, lower-powered wireless signals that deliver better signal coverage, improved voice quality, and higher data performance to mobile users.

Small cell technology can be used to generate high-quality mobile signals indoors and at remote outdoor locations. It can also satisfy the growing demand for mobile data by expanding a macro network’s data capacity at a fraction of the cost.

Robert Joyce, chief radio engineer at Telefonica UK, noted that the major obstacle to deploying small cell was finding a reliable and yet inexpensive way to backhaul traffic from hundreds or even thousands of small cell nodes.

That is where Ruckus Wireless’ Smart Mesh technology comes in. Smart Mesh combines advanced self-organizing network (SON) principles with Ruckus-patented adaptive antenna arrays and predictive channel management techniques. The synergized technologies and techniques result in Wi-Fi mesh backbone links between nodes that are highly resilient and rated at speeds of 5 GHz.

These links automatically adapt to changes in environmental conditions. Wireless service providers like O2 and its owner, Telefonica UK, can use those links to mesh traffic. The innovative method will allow delivery of reliable backhaul for licensed cellular and unlicensed Wi-Fi traffic in both line of sight and non-line of site environments.

The Ruckus SmartCell system allows the innovative use of LTE small cells to give mobile operators a boost in capacity. By co-locating and combining LTE small cells with Wi-Fi access points, which allows LTE small cells to share site-lease agreements and backhaul, wireless network operators can simplify operations and save money.

In addition, by integrating Wi-Fi and LTE small cells within the cellular core, operators can better optimize network utilization across the radio access network. Subscribers will get to enjoy further improvement in performance and a seamless Wi-Fi experience.

Mr. Joyce can attest to the effectiveness of the SmartMesh-empowered mobile backhauling services. "With Smart Mesh,” said the Telefonica chief radio engineer, “we are running fiber to just one of every five nodes.” Reducing the amount of fiber led to savings in capital and OPEX. It also allowed faster deployment of the system and similarly speedy delivery of the wireless service.

RAD ETX-5300 joins Best Carrier Ethernet Aggregation Product Award final list

A prestigious panel of industry judges at the 2012 Carrier Ethernet World Congress added RAD Data Communications's ETX-5300A Ethernet service aggregation platform to the list of finalists for this year's Carrier Ethernet Award.

The brand new RAD product snagged a shortlisted position in the Best Carrier Ethernet Aggregation Product category for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) market.

The ETX-5300A moves Ethernet and TDM traffic from the access network to the provider’s edge over native 10-Gigabit Ethernet links. It allows operators to optimize converged business, wholesale, and mobile backhaul services using a single device. This will bring significant reductions to operational costs per Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) link. 

Judges will be drawn from leading industry analyst firms (such as Ovum and Infonetics) and telecom operators (like Telus, Colt, Oi Brasil, and NTT Japan.) 

The Best Carrier Ethernet Aggregation Product will be presented under the auspices of event organizer IIR Telecoms & Technology in front of the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF).

The Spanish city of Barcelona will host this year's Carrier Ethernet World Congress. The ceremony for its Carrier Ethernet Awards will be held on September 18.

In 2011, RAD received two Carrier Ethernet Awards at two different Carrier Ethernet gatherings. The company, which primary handle mobile backhauling, is the only vendor which received more than one award.

Last year's winning products were ETX-203A, which Singapore acknowledged as the "best Carrier Ethernet demarcation product in Asia-Pacific;" and the ETX-205A, which won the award for "Best Carrier Ethernet mobile backhaul product in EMEA" during the Carrier Ethernet World Congress 2011 in Amsterdam.