Growth in Mobile Data Triples Backhaul Capacity Demands

(Business News & Technology News, 26 Jun 2009)

The need for more backhaul capacity will grow 3 fold between 2009 and 2013, according to a recent report by In-Stat. Operators are deploying EV-DO 2000, HSPA/HSPA+, WiMAX, and LTE to meet the growing demand for high speed mobile data. In the process, the bottleneck affect of backhaul has become more prominent.

Traditionally, voice has dominated the traffic going across a mobile operator’s network. With voice as the primary traffic component, an operator could meet its backhaul requirements with a couple of T-1’s per base station. That has all changed with operators relying on data for revenue growth.

“Cellular and WiMAX backhaul provides that crucial link between the mobile operator’s radio access network and its core network,” says Frank Dickson, In-Stat’s VP of Mobile Internet research. “It does an operator no good to install a base station with 7.2Mbps capacity if the backhaul is limited to 4.5Mbps.”

Some of the key findings from In-Stat’s new research are:
• WiMAX and LTE will require backhaul needs of 80-100Mbps. Their deployments will increase the need for new backhaul solutions.
• While microwave will remain the most common last mile link medium, Ethernet is playing an increasing role in supporting backhaul needs for cellular and WiMAX networks.
• 90,000Gbps of capacity in the last mile of the backhaul network will be needed by the end of 2013 to support the worlds cellular and WiMAX networks.
• In Asia/Pacific, the cellular backhaul last mile backhaul capacity for LTE will be 2,500Gbps in 2013.