Cable / Telecom News

Demand for backhaul capacity will triple, predicts In-Stat


The need for more backhaul capacity will grow three fold between 2009 and 2013, according to a recent report by In-Stat.

Traditionally, voice has dominated the traffic going across a mobile operator’s network, meaning an operator could meet its backhaul requirements with a few T-1’s per base station. But that has changed with operators now relying on data for revenue growth, maintains the report called Big Pipes—The Global Market for Cellular/WiMAX Backhaul.

With operators deploying EV-DO 2000, HSPA/HSPA+, WiMAX, and LTE to meet the growing demand for high speed mobile data, the bottleneck affect of backhaul has become more prominent.

“Cellular and WiMAX backhaul provides that crucial link between the mobile operator’s radio access network and its core network,” said Frank Dickson, In-Stat’s VP of mobile Internet research, in the press release. “It does an operator no good to install a base station with 7.2 Mbps capacity if the backhaul is limited to 4.5 Mbps.”

Recent In-Stat research also found that:

– WiMAX and LTE will require backhaul needs of 80-100 Mbps, and their deployments will increase the need for new backhaul solutions;

– While microwave will remain the most common last mile link medium, Ethernet is playing an increasing role in supporting backhaul needs for cellular and WiMAX networks;

– 90,000 Gbps of capacity in the last mile of the backhaul network will be needed by the end of 2013 to support the world’s cellular and WiMAX networks;

– In Asia/Pacific, the cellular backhaul last mile backhaul capacity for LTE will be 2,500 Gbps in 2013.

www.instat.com