Ethernet backhaul equipment sales up 367pc

CAMPBELL, USA: Last year Ethernet-based mobile backhaul equipment sales jumped 36 percent year-over-year, to $4.8 billion, representing 80 percent of total backhaul spend, finds Infonetics Research.

Infonetics expects revenue from microwave Ethernet mobile backhaul equipment to jump 367 percent in 2010 over 2009.

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The analyst firm expect that Ethernet spending to spike again in 2010 and growth to continue for many years, fueled by the ongoing HSPA/HSPA+ onslaught across the 3GPP world and early LTE deployments led by 3GPP2 players.

"We see no let-up in the Ethernet market: improvements to backhaul solutions, such as packet timing and synchronization, have been made, and about 100 operators around the world are now actively deploying a single IP-Ethernet backhaul to carry all traffic," explains Michael Howard, principal analyst and co-founder, Infonetics Research.

Ericsson continues to lead in worldwide mobile backhaul microwave radio revenue market share, following closely by Huawei, Nokia Siemens, and NEC.

"Even with TDM microwave spending declining significantly every year from here on out as service providers move to packet technology, we expect the overall mobile backhaul equipment market to grow to $8.2 billion by 2014 based mainly on the strength of Ethernet equipment," he adds.

Alcatel-Lucent holds the #1 spot in the first half of 2010 for worldwide revenue in the fast-growing Ethernet cell site routers and gateways segment, ahead of Tellabs, Cisco, and Huawei.

Between 2010 and 2014, service providers are expected to spend a cumulative $36 billion worldwide on mobile backhaul equipment.

Ethernet cell site routers and gateways posted double- and triple-digit percent revenue increases in 2009 and are expected to continue growing year-over-year at least through 2014.