The point-to-point microwave equipment market is forecast to grow 30 percent over the next five years to $6.6 billion in 2014, according to a newly published report by Dell’Oro Group.
“Mobile data traffic is expected to nearly double each year in the near future and by 2014, the vast majority of traffic backhauled from cell sites will be data packets and not voice circuits,” said Jimmy Yu, Sr. Director of Microwave Transmission research at Dell’Oro Group. “We believe this will drive demand for Ethernet microwave systems that allow mobile operators to scale their backhaul network beyond a few megabits of T1s and E1s to adding a full fast Ethernet. This migration to Ethernet will likely also give operators an opportunity to create a more efficient data backhaul network that takes advantage of statistical multiplexing and quality of service that prioritizes traffic according to its type. We, therefore, expect that combined Packet and Hybrid Microwave, both of which switch and transmit native Ethernet, will become 95 percent of the total radio transceiver shipments by 2014,” Yu added.
