[Infonetics]: Small Cell Market to Reach $2.1B by 2016 ($700/unit)

 
Infonetics Research principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, Stéphane Téral (pictured), recent report forecasts that ".. the global small cell market to grow rapidly, with about 3 million small cells shipping and the market worth about $2.1 billion in 2016 ... Infonetics expects public space femtocells to make up more than 50% of all small cells shipped in 2012".
 

In the context of the report, small cells are "low power mobile network nodes known as microcells, picocells, and femtocells (public space, not residential) made by the "Big 5" RAN vendors -- Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, and ZTE – as well as small cell specialists like ip.access, Contela, Juni, Minieum Networks, Ubiquisys, and others".

" .. Small cell market growth is being driven by operators seeking to enhance saturated macrocellular networks that are currently struggling to maintain a decent mobile broadband experience for subscribers".

For example, 70,000 units may be required to cover just London during the Olympic games this summer - see  "A Year Before the Olympics - London is Running Out of Mobile Capacity" - here.
   

" .. the chief objective is to complement and enhance the macrocell layer from a capacity standpoint with a new breed of low-power nodes like public space femtocells and WiFi. But dividing the macro layers into smaller cells remains challenging due to inter-cell interference and backhaul issues. The question is: how small can the cell be? Because the smaller the cell, the higher the number of units required to cover an area, and that will determine the true size of the small cell market"

  

See "Small cell market to hit 3 million units in 2016, driven by urban area capacity upgrades" - here.

Related post - "[Infonetics]: Femtocell Market to Reach $3B by 2015" - here and "[Infonetics]: Demand for Data Drives MNOs to Deploy Small Cells; Already Offload 10%" - here.

[Infonetics]: Femtocell Market to Reach $3B by 2015

New research by Richard Webb (pictured), directing analyst for microwave, mobile offload and mobile broadband devices at Infonetics Research, finds that "Year over year (3Q10 to 3Q11), global femtocell revenue is up 37% and 4G LTE femtocells are expected to start shipping in late 2012".

"Femtocell market leader Airvana is the first to break through the US$25 million quarterly revenue threshold, expanding its revenue market share lead significantly .. The Cisco/ip.access partnership maintains its lead in terms of femtocell unit share, and increased its quarterly femtocell revenue to its second-highest level to date, but did not gain revenue market share as other players also posted notable gains, including Huawei and NEC/Ubiquisys"

   

"This year the femtocell market will scale up significantly and break out into clearer market segments: consumer, enterprise, and rural and metro public space femtocells. As price points continue to come down, we expect to see global femtocell revenue nearly double this year while unit shipments grow at nearly 140% compared to 2011".


See "Femtocell market set to double in 2012, Airvana expands lead" - here.

[Infonetics]: Demand for Data Drives MNOs to Deploy Small Cells; Already Offload 10%

      

Infonetics Research published 2 new research papers by Stéphane Téral, Principal Analyst, Mobile and FMC Infrastructure, and Michael Howard (pictured), principal analyst and co-founder of on small cells.

The papers find that ".. small cells are shifting from indoor voice coverage improvement to data optimization and are poised to play a major role in 3G and 4G network expansion .. The top 3 drivers for deploying small cells are optimizing in-building coverage, optimizing high data usage areas, and non-expandability of the macro network ..". 

"While operators handle most of their mobile traffic with macrocells (90% on average) and the backhaul network, we were surprised to find that operators we surveyed already offload about 10% of their traffic over indoor and outdoor small cells, WiFi hotspots, and residential femtocells – and they intend to triple that to about 30% at some point in 2013 or later"

See "Small cell survey shows operators plan to run 12% of network capacity on small cells by 2012" - here and "New study details operator plans for small cell backhaul" - here.

Juniper Research: By 2015 63% of Mobile Traffic will be Offloaded to a Fixed Connection

 

Follow-up on today's earlier post on mobile offloading. Nitin Bhas, Research Analyst with Juniper Research, published a new research showing that "the majority of traffic (63%) generated by Smartphones, Tablets and Feature Phones will transfer onto the fixed network via Wi-Fi and Femtocells by 2015. This means that the annual mobile data traffic offloaded from operators’ networks via WiFi and Femtocells is forecast to reach nearly 9000 petabytes (PB) by 2015, which equates to a voluminous 11 billion movie downloads"

See "Relief Ahead for Mobile Data Networks as 63% of traffic to Move onto Fixed Networks via WiFi and Femtocells by 2015, finds Juniper Research" - here.

"Although currently WiFi accounts for over 98% of the traffic offloaded, Femtocells will account for a steadily increasing proportion over the forecast period .. Mobile data offloaded via WiFi from operators’ networks expected to reach almost 90% of total data offloaded".

FierceWireless: "Policy control and network optimization is rising, Femtocells and off-loading data is falling"

   

In its MWC 2011 "Scoreboard:Infrastructure" FierceWirless says:

" .. tide of mobile data is rising and is a problem .. but a range of vendors promise a more delicate approach to the problem--and at MWC this year they were out in force. Vendors both big (Alcatel-Lucent and Tellabs) and small (Allot Communications, Flash Networks, Telcordia, Broadhop, ByteMobile, Sandvine, Acme Packet, Bridgewater and others) made policy control and network optimization hot topics of discussion among wireless operators"

while

"there was surprisingly little buzz about possible tactics to discharge traffic onto alternative transport systems. Operators by and large seem keen on building, accelerating and strengthening their licensed wireless networks--the assets they can easily control and charge for. Femtocells and Wi-Fi offload, while maintaining a sizable presence at MWC, weren't the must-see checkpoints of previous years."See "Mobile World Congress 2011 Scorecard: Infrastructure" - here.

[Yankee Group]: "half of the 4G operators to use femtocells"

 

A new research by Chris Nicoll from the Yankee Group covers the femtocell deployment plans:

"It has taken a few years, but femtocell’s time may just be around the corner .. We expect over half of the 4G operators to use femtocells to reduce the capex cost of a new 4G network by 2016 ..  femto’s are being embraced by the key operators, including AT&T, Vodaphone and Softbank, and the service, cost and deployment challenges are well within the control of the operators themselves"

See "Femto’s time is finally coming" - here and here.

"However, in dealing with consumer preference of off-load technologies, there seems to be a gap.  The MNO survey respondents expressed a 2:1 preference for using femtocells for offload and home services, as opposed to Wi-Fi alone. Wi-Fi routers may be cheaper, and user acceptance even greater, but MNOs prefer the increased control of user experience and consumer spend  ... It does not help that in a comparison of the benefits of femtocell vs. Wi-Fi, the femto’s strong points are heavily weighted toward carriers rather than consumers"

See also "Ovum Mobile Revenue CAGR Forecast (2009-2015): Data +11%, Voice -1.4%" - here.

Ovum Mobile Revenue CAGR Forecast (2009-2015): Data +11%, Voice -1.4%

  

Steven Hartley, Ovum's Senior Analyst, Mobile practice, provides some insights into Ovum's recent research - "Global mobile market outlook: 2010–15".

See TelecomsEurope's story - "Mobile sector to generate $1tr revenues by 2015" - here. More details on the report itself - here.

Some of the findings:

• Global mobile connections are expected to reach 7.4 billion in 2015 .. a CAGR of 8% from 2009 to 2015
   
• Cost and traffic volume pressures will combine to make networks the focus of attention. Macro and backhaul network upgrades, along with the use of Wi-Fi and femtocells to offload traffic, will become commonplace
   
• Total global data revenues are expected to reach $392.9B in 2015, a CAGR of 11% from 2009 to 2015. North America and Western Europe will drive data revenue growth. Nonetheless, Asia-Pacific will be the largest contributor of data revenues, due to its sheer volume of connections and the presence of significant data markets
   
• Yet voice will remain the single greatest contributor to mobile operator revenues, with only North America seeing voice contribute less than 50% of total revenues in 2015. This is despite continued immense pressure on voice. Total global voice revenues will fall at a CAGR of -1.4% to $607.9B in 2015.