Mobile network operators (MNOs) must increase capacity and optimise their backhaul networks over the next five years to meet the increasing demands of mobile broadband users, says market research company Juniper Research.
According to the company’s new mobile research report, operators need to spend almost $840bn globally over the next five years in order to address "bottlenecks in their backhaul networks."
The Mobile Network Backhaul report found that existing backhaul networks, based on legacy technologies, are not capable of supporting the forecasted increase in both data users and data traffic.
Juniper Research said in the report that MNOs will have to be discreet while making technology choices to address concerns raised by the rapid uptake of subscriber data services and advances in data capacity in the radio access network.
It added that choosing the right technology, or the right combination of technologies, will be a key part of minimising capital costs.
The report author Nitin Bhas said that as many operators are either deploying 3G or augmenting/upgrading their network to 4G, they need to simultaneously manage the upgrade of their backhaul networks with the upgrade of their radio networks.
The report also found that microwave and fibre will dominate the backhaul market with microwave accounting for over 60% of the global mobile backhaul capacity by 2016.
