January 20th, 2012
Juniper Research predicts that mobile network operators will have to spend $840 billion globally on optimizing backhaul assets and adding capacity between 2011 and 2016.
Microwave will represent about 60 percent of the backhaul in 2016, Juniper Research predicts. Microwave backhaul will be driven by capacity needs in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Indian Subcontinent and the rest of the Asia Pacific region.
By 2016, operator investments in the Far East and China will reach $233 billion, driven by fiber backhaul deployments.
In North America, Juniper predicts that optical fiber will overtake copper as the most widely used access technology.
Microwave’s share of mobile backhaul capacity in the Indian Subcontinent is set to reach almost 87 percent by 2016.
But backhaul capacity will not the only key concern mobile executives will be facing between now and 2016. Juniper Research also forecasts that mobile service providers face potential capital investment and operating costs that actually exceed revenues by about 2014, according to Juniper Research.
The problem is that profit margins are running between 15 percent and 20 percent, which means many service providers are at about break even.
By 2015, costs will exceed revenues slightly, and fall below capital and operating expense by about 2016. Mobile backhaul
Tags: 3g, 4g, backhaul
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January 17th, 2012
No matter how one looks at the matter, as mobile service providers deploy more small cells that cover extremely small areas in high-density, high-traffic urban areas, the cost of base stations and backhaul will be crucial.
Whichever technology is used to backhaul small cells, it has to be cheap, “it has to be massively cheap,” said Andy Sutton, Everything Everywhere principal architect, access transport. “We have a financial envelope for small cells and it’s challenging.” small cell economics
Cost is so important because small cells will have relatively low usage compared to a macrocell and there will be lots of sites to support. Compared with macrocells, small cells will cover distance of about 50 square meters or 538 square feet. That’s an area about 23 feet by 23 feet.
One way to look at matters is that this is an area smaller than the range of a consumer’s home Wi-Fi router.
Some think that might require use of unlicensed spectrum, using adaptive directional antennas with smart meshing technology and predictive channel management, argues David Callisch, Ruckus Wireless VP. Unlicensed spectrum
That will probably make more sense to European service providers than to North American mobile service providers, who traditionally have preferred fixed line connections to wireless, even using licensed spectrum.
But small cells have demanding new cost constraints.
Tags: mobile backhaul, small cell
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January 13th, 2012
Mobile services are crucial for communications service providers and other business partners in the communications ecosystem because of the growing dominance of mobile revenues. According to Ofcom, mobile service revenues now represent the majority of revenues in many countries.
Already above 50 percent, mobile revenues now are approaching 60 percent of total. 
By some measures, service providers now make nearly as much money from mobile broadband services as they do from fixed broadband. Ofcom analysis
Over time, mobile broadband is likely to become even more important, if for no other reason than that mobile broadband is sold on a per-device, nearly a per-user basis, while fixed broadband is sold per household.
Granted, fixed mobile connections generate more revenue per line. But mobile units will outnumber fixed connections by such a margin that aggregate revenue will continue to shift in the direction of mobile services. 
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