Annual investments in the wireless network infrastructure sector are poised to reach $56 billion by 2020, up from $53 billion this year, according to a report from telecoms consulting and intelligence firm SNS Telecom. This would amount to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2 percent.
This funding is expected to be driven by additional investment by mobile operators in Heterogeneous Network infrastructure – small cells, carrier Wi-Fi and Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS). Carriers are currently facing increased capacity and coverage requirements.
SNS also expects the market to shift from standalone clusters of base stations toward Centralized RAN architecture (C-RAN), which would offer considerable benefits “such as resource pooling, multi-cell coordination, network extensibility and energy efficient.”
Standalone macrocells, however, “will still account for 32 percent of global network infrastructure investments in 2020,” per Fierce Wireless. Additionally, “LTE, LTE-Advanced and LTE-Advanced Pro networks will generate more than $950 billion in annual service revenue by 2020.”
