A growing number of Service Providers will be deploying SDN technologies in their mobile backhaul networks in 2016, according to a newly published 2015 IHS Infonetics Macrocell Backhaul Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey.
Some highlights of the survey:
- Greater network flexibility and improved operational efficiencies are the chief drivers for implementing network functions virtualization (NFV) within the backhaul network
- Over half of those surveyed currently share backhaul facilities with other operators or intend to do so
- Capacity and cell site location are the top-rated criteria by respondents in planning for 5G networks; this is echoed in rising backhaul link capacity requirements
- Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei tie for leading macrocell backhaul vendor, each cited as a top-3 vendor by 41 percent of respondents, ahead of Ericsson
“With the evolution of mobile networks in progress, mobile backhaul solutions need to be more flexible, scalable and simplified to deliver increased capacity with quality of service. Operators taking part in our latest macrocell backhaul survey have a clear set of priorities regarding backhaul service-level agreement metrics, for instance. It’ll be important for backhaul to be integrated for macrocell and small cell backhaul and be more intelligent, fully optimized and operationally efficient,” said Richard Webb, research director for mobile backhaul and small cells at IHS.
http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2015/Macrocell-Backhaul-Strategies-Survey.asp