Report: Macro, small cell radio deployments to surge over next 5 years

A newly published market forecast report by Dell’Oro Group, a specialist in the networking and telecommunications industries, states that the Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN) LTE equipment market for both macro and small cell radios will witness tremendous growth over the next five years -- with LTE RAN revenue levels expected to outdo the RAN revenue peaks of GSM in 2007 and WCDMA in 2011.

“The momentum around LTE coverage build-outs and subscriber adoption is stronger than anything we have experienced with previous mobile technologies,” comments Stefan Pongratz, analyst of Dell’Oro's RAN and Small Cell programs.

The 5-year forecast report projects the Total RAN market (macro and small cell) to grow for a second consecutive year in 2014 and decline at a low single-digit CAGR between 2014 and 2018. Macro are investments expected to remain strong throughout the forecast period, with more than 1 million macro (RRU, antenna integrated radio, active antenna system) radios shipping in 2018, configured using both distributed and centralized baseband architectures.

Pongratz adds, “The pace of the LTE radio deployments during the coverage phase and the variety of band combinations available for LTE is enabling service providers to deploy radios in multiple bands optimized for coverage and capacity. This is driving investments to remain high even after the initial LTE coverage phase."

Significantly, Dell’Oro Group’s quarterly market share report reveals that, in terms of revenue, the top 4 vendors in the LTE RAN market in the first quarter 2014 were Ericsson, Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, and Nokia. The report further sees LTE-TDD technology accounting for nearly 40% of LTE RF carrier shipments in the forecast period.

Learn more about the report.