Greg Friesen, VP of product management at DragonWave, says 2017 promises to be another exciting year in the telecom industry.
There will continue to be many changes, both within the telecom industry, as well as with the technologies that are driving the industry. For 2017, expect to see the following trends being the most significant technology drivers:
Emergence of 4.5G based networks to provide increase user capacities
2017 will see LTE networks evolve to 3GPP release 12. In addition to more support for small cells and IoT services, to be discussed separately here, there are a number of important capacity features. These key features include intersite carrier aggregation of up to 5 carriers and 100MHz, MIMO and beamforming. The combination of these upgrades will allow significantly higher mobile throughputs for users. 2017 may even see early deployments of 3GPP release 13, which will bring additional capacity enhancements such as enhanced carrier aggregation of up to 32 carriers and 640 MHz, enhanced beamforming and support of License Assisted Access (LAA).
Commercialization of consumer IoT services
Mobile operators now have the technology to offer mobile IoT services on their networks. In addition, mobile connected devices are starting to emerge. 2017 should see operators beginning to offer IoT service plans for residential use. This will result in a proliferation of connected devices, such as environmental sensors, pet trackers, connected fitness trackers, and much more.
Increased focus on network security
2016 marked another year of huge network security breaches, highlighted by the U.S. election leaks. In 2017, expect there to be an increased focus on network security across the network. This will result in the implementation of more security features, including Macsec, 256AES encryption, and LTE Release 12 security enhancements.
Increased network densification
Though 4.5G will bring many capacity enhancements, these often require new devices or result in increased spectrum usage. However, by deploying denser cells through small cell deployments, operators can increase user throughput and coverage without increasing spectrum usage. Although outdoor small cell deployments got started in 2016, expect 2017 to see significant increased growth of outdoor small cells, as operators strive to differentiate their networks with increased user capacity and improved coverage.
Higher Power Wireless Backhaul Systems to Address operator OPEX
As operators are driven to deploy higher capacities, while at the same time offering all-you-can use data plans, they will be forced to look at reducing network costs. Although CAPEX has always been the focus, the increased strain on costs will drive operators to place greater scrutiny on OPEX. One of the largest OPEX drivers is site lease costs. By leveraging newly introduced higher power wireless backhaul systems, operators can minimize antenna sizes and drastically reduce their monthly tower and rooftop lease costs.
2017 is certainly shaping to be a year where many new technologies will be leveraged to improve the mobile user experience. Beyond the 5 major trends discussed here, also expect to see proliferation of NFV and SDN, as well as the likely introduction of some new important technologies.
Greg Friesen is the VP of product management at DragonWave, responsible for global product management responsibilities across the company’s complete portfolio of products.
