5-year forecast: Microwave transmission

Dell’Oro Group just published its five 5-Year forecast report for the Microwave Transmissions & Mobile Backhaul market.
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According to Jimmy Yu, Vice President and analyst, the demand for Microwave Transmission equipment will increase for a number of years and that much of the growth will be from rising sales of E-band radio transceiver shipments anticipated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 30 percent.

-xHaul systems equipment in demand-
xHaul, a term referring to fronthaul, midhaul, and backhaul as well as transport and packet processing, is projected to grow through the forecast period, reaching nearly $9 billion by 2025.

This multi-year growth is expected to be driven by 5G.

In the xHaul forecast, we include both Mobile Transport (fronthaul and backhaul) and Routers & Switches.

As would be expected, we believe the highest growth in xHaul will be from growing installations of Routers & Switches as more Layer 2 and 3 functions are required in the mobile network.

-The Mobile Transport layer returns to growth-
The end of the 4G deployment ramp brought a slowdown in both mobile backhaul and fronthaul transport equipment sales.

However, this trend seems to be in reverse as 5G rolls out globally.

A small glimpse of this reversal, though restrained by the COVID-19 pandemic, was visible in 2020 when the Mobile Transport equipment market increased slightly.

We believe the growth in 2020 was just the beginning, and predict that the Mobile Transport market, consisting of mobile backhaul and fronthaul, will grow for many more years and that the cumulative revenue for the next five years will approach $27 billion, a solid increase over the previous five-year period.

-Microwave Transmission important for 5G backhaul-
While much of the growth will be with fiber backhaul systems, we expect wireless backhaul systems such as Microwave Transmission equipment will be a critical component in an operator’s successful rollout of 5G for two simple reasons: fiber is not everywhere and time to market is critical to success.

Therefore, we anticipate that the demand for Microwave Transmission equipment will increase for a number of years and that much of the growth will be from rising sales of E-band radios.

We forecast E-Band radio transceiver shipments to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 30 percent.
CT Bureau