Microwave radio: Key market research findings
- Reduced TCO drives market growth
- Packet-only segment accounts for a majority of the market’s revenue
- Key vendors – Alcatel Lucent, Dragonwave, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, NEC, and ZTE
Technavio’s market research analysts predict the global microwave radio market to grow at a CAGR of around 19% between 2016 and 2020. The growth of this market can be accredited to the decrease in tariff for voice and data services. Microwave radio communication is becoming an important network infrastructure for allowing voice and data transmission owing to its low TCO to a network operator. Also, the cost of deployment of a microwave as a means of transport network is cheaper as compared to other transport networks such as fiber network. The global microwave radio market was dominated by the APAC with a market share of around 38% in 2015. The upgradation of the core and microwave transmission network by network operators to provide advanced services like 3G, 4G, and above in the region, especially India, China, Philippines, and Thailand, will fuel further growth in the microwave radio market in APAC during the forecast period.
The new market research report from Technavio presents a breakdown and analysis of the microwave radio segments based on the technology.
“The emergence of microwaves as a front-haul solution in a key trend in the current market scenario. Front-haul is referred to as a connection between radio and the baseband using common public radio interface (CPRI) standards. The entire cost of handling passive infra shifts to the centralized location where BBU is kept, while RRU gets connected to BBU with millimeter wave radio and CPRI standard protocol with the CPRI and millimeter microwave,” says Sunil Kumar Singh, Lead Analyst, Hardware & Semiconductor, Technavio Research.
Currently, the packet-only segment dominates the global market by accounting for around 40% of the overall market revenue. The global packet microwave radio market is driven by greenfield projects such as the roll out of 4G network. In terms of bandwidth, packet radios provide an additional benefit when compared with TDM as they can use flexible bandwidth for transferring data for improving the overall performance.
The key vendors in the global microwave radio market include Alcatel Lucent, Dragonwave, Ericsson, Huawei Technologies, NEC, and ZTE. The market is characterized by the presence of several vendors that provide microwave radio as per the demand and requirements of the customers. The growth of this market is greatly influenced by advances in technology and competitive pricing. Operators are adopting microwave radio in an attempt to bring down the TCO. This is owing to the fact that the deployment of microwave radios is more cost-effective than fiber networks.
A more detailed analysis is available in the Technavio report, Global Microwave Radio Market 2016-2020.
We can customize reports by other regions and specific segments upon request.
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