FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MIAMI, Florida, and BROCKENHURST, England, April 9,  2013-  The RAN industry is poised for a serious shakeout in the next few years as the RAN investment will shift to software, according to Maravedis-Rethink's new report entitled "Forecasting The New RAN: How carriers will monetize the data deluge" part of the RAN research service.

While hardware commoditizes, operators will increase efficiency and value in their RANs by adopting software-defined technologies such as virtualization. "For the first time in a decade, there is a real prospect of a shake-up in the RAN vendor landscape, and the winners will be those who innovate not just in network topology but in software," said Caroline Gabriel, author of the report.

Small cells and distributed RANs, the twin hallmarks of the new mobile broadband network, are squeezing revenues from traditional base stations. "Macrocell shipments will reach their peak in 2016 at almost 1.6million units and then decline by 2018, provoking a huge disruption to the economics of the RAN and the suppliers' rankings," added Caroline.

While Ericsson and Huawei are dominant in 2013, Maravedis-Rethink's analysis highlights their vulnerabilities as smaller suppliers, not to mention Cisco, enter their territory on the back of metrocells and software innovations. For mobile operators, the new networks offer to reduce the cost of delivering data by 75% compared to conventional designs.

Key highlights of the report:

• CAPEX will shift from traditional base stations to small cells - accounting for $12bn in spending in 2018 - and the servers to run cloud-RANs ($2.63bn);
• By 2018, 4.6 million LTE metrocells will have been deployed, including 3.3 million dual-mode devices;
• 60 percent of deployments will be outdoor by 2018;
• TD-LTE infrastructure market will reach $1.9 billion a year in 2018;
• Offload to seamless WiFi will reach 50% of typical 3G carrier traffic by 2016;  
• AAS (active antenna systems) will feature in over 25% of macrocell site deployments by 2018.

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MARAVEDIS-RETHINK is a leading analyst firm focusing on wireless infrastructure technologies and markets.  www.maravedis-bwa.com . "Forecasting The New RAN: How carriers will monetize the data deluge" report is part of the annual RAN Research Service.

For more information, contact:

Adlane Fellah,

Customer Engagement

Maravedis-Rethink

afellah@maravedis-bwa.com 

Tel: +1 (305) 865 1006