Self-Organizing Network (SON) market grew nearly 50 percent in the last two years, says Stephane Teral, senior research director, mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, IHS Markit.
SON revenue was $2.2 billion in 2015, increasing 48 percent as compared to 2014, according to the annual IHS Markit SON and optimization software report.
The 2G / 3G optimization and SON worldwide revenue grew 18 percent in 2015 to $5.1 billion, the telecom report said.
By 2020, the 2G / 3G optimization and SON market is forecast to reach $7 billion. Telecoms will be spending on SON in order to reduce Opex and remove human-made errors from the complex telecom networks.
The spending in SON was driven by the need for automation as humans struggle to manage complex networks.
While 3G Evolved High Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) has been the main force behind SON, the Long Term Evolution (LTE) did not play much role in the growth of SON.
More than 80 percent of mobile network operators worldwide are using SON for 3G/HSPA/HSPA+ optimization. There are more than 500 commercial LTE networks worldwide. Operators say LTE is extremely reliable and fully optimized. 3G optimization remains a main concern for telecoms and 2G is doing fine.
AT&T and KDDI are making investment in 3G and 4G SON deployments. Some small telecom players are spending for 3G optimization. Large European telecom service providers such as BT/EE, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone are deploying or have deployed SON across their multiple networks.
In May 015, Nokia Networks acquired Eden Rock Communications to spearhead the centralized SON (C-SON) market. C-SON still rules over distributed SON (D-SON). Tier-1 mobile network vendor Nokia dominates the C-SON segment. SON specialist vendors such as Amdocs and Cisco are not the leaders in C-SON market.
Last year’s acquisition of Eden Rock Communications has really paid off for Nokia, which scored a major win at Orange in August 2016.
