Mobile fronthaul equipment market forecast from IHS Markit

Mobile fronthaul equipmentMobile fronthaul equipment market is expected to reach $2.5 billion growing at a 26 percent CAGR from 2017 to 2021, said Richard Webb, associate director, research and analysis, mobile backhaul and small cells, IHS Markit.

Mobile fronthaul equipment market revenue was $787 million (+56 percent) in 2016, with the majority coming from Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific market is experiencing modest scale and has long-term potential as solutions evolve from Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) based to Ethernet based.

Wireline made up the entirety of the mobile fronthaul market in 2016. The strong dominance of wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) equipment will continue.

Millimeter wave, which comprised 3 percent of total revenue, is anticipated to grow to 12 percent of revenue by 2021, mostly utilized in small cell-like deployments.

Passive WDM accounted for 21 percent of wireline revenue share in 2016, with active holding the remaining 79 percent. Passive WDM is expected to hold 7 percent of wireline revenue, with active WDM making up 93 percent by 2021. Passive optical network (PON) equipment, within the passive WDM category, may come into play as the fronthaul market evolves.

Asia Pacific held the majority of mobile fronthaul revenue with 82 percent, followed by North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) and CALA (Caribbean and Latin America).

Telecom vendors conducted the first trials of mobile fronthaul in live operator networks in 2013. Due to the complexity of the overall centralized RAN (C-RAN) architecture that mobile fronthaul supports, it will take a long time for mobile fronthaul technologies to become mainstream.