Mobile Operators Turning to Packet Backhaul As Mobile Broadband Traffic Volumes Explode

­The transition from TDM to packet-based backhaul networks is now underway around the world, and the process is expected to accelerate with the deployment of LTE networks, says a report from Heavy Reading.

"Carriers have been experimenting with different packet backhaul solutions for three or four years now," says Patrick Donegan, Senior Analyst with Heavy Reading and author of Packet Backhaul: Carrier Strategies & Real-World Deployments. "With mobile broadband traffic volumes now increasing by a factor of ten year-over-year in many cases, there is an urgent need for real-world insight into just how much progress carriers - and by implication, their vendor suppliers - are making in executing on this transition."

The pace of mobile broadband growth is likely to accelerate with the expected commercial deployment of LTE within three years, Donegan notes. "TDM circuits no longer provide the capacity, flexibility, and crucially, the cost-per-bit metrics that are needed to enable the mobile industry to make a profitable transition from a voice-dominated business model to a data-dominated business model," he adds. "The big question now confronting operators is whether packet-based technologies are ready to take the place of TDM."

The transition from TDM to packet backhaul is still in its infancy. The report says that as of the end of April 2009, there were fewer than 55,000 2G or 3G cell sites in live service with packet backhaul worldwide, out of a global total of 2.4 million sites.

The average live packet backhaul deployment today consists of just over 700 cell sites. More than half of the live deployments referenced by vendors for the report consist of fewer than 500 live cell sites. Only 18 percent of deployments consist of more than 2,000 live cell sites.

Europe is the world's leading regional market for packet backhaul deployments. Europe came first in terms of the number of live packet backhaul references, as well as in terms of the live cell site count provided by the vendor respondents. European operators BT and Vodafone Portugal also emerge at the leading edge of packet backhaul of voice and data services in additional carrier research undertaken to support this survey.

Central and Latin America is seeing significantly more traction in packet backhaul than other emerging market regions. Several vendors provided deployment references in this region. Deployments in this region are currently more likely to leverage a packet transport interface in the base station itself, rather than a dedicated cell site gateway, than deployments in developed markets.

Two thirds of live packet backhaul deployments are by carriers that own a mobile network. Mobile carriers are more likely to trust themselves or their wireline parent to turn up hundreds of cell sites to packet backhaul service at this stage of the market's development. Some integrated carriers are deploying new packet backhaul networks as part of a converged transport network buildout, providing packet transport services to various fixed and mobile access networks out at the edge of the network.

Posted to the site on 27th August 2009