US Backhaul Capacity Continues to Increase Substantially

­The United States mobile wireless market will drive the backhaul service and associated equipment markets to the same good fortune as wireless carriers, according to a new report from Visant Strategies.

"All wireless carriers in the United States are continuing to ramp up their networks with technologies that allow much greater capacity and the use of much more capacity per user, mainly a result of meaningful wireless data applications and devices, and this means much more backhaul capacity will be needed," said report author Andy Fuertes of Visant Strategies.

"Backhaul cost and capacity challenges exist in the middle and edge of the wireless network as leased copper lines which backhaul most base stations today are often deemed too costly for the exponential jump in backhaul capacity that will be needed for 3.5G/4G," Fuertes said.

"Fiber is not always available at the base station or at middle elements of the wireless network, such as the RNC/BSC, so carriers are using more wireless backhaul," said Larry Swasey of Visant Strategies.

According to the report, base stations with more than 24 Mbps of backhaul capacity will grow by more than a factor of twenty from 2009 to 2015 while in 2015 the number of base stations with less than 12 Mbps of backhaul capacity will be half of that today. Also, wireless backhaul links will nearly double by 2015 while wireline backhaul links will increase slightly through the same period.

Posted to the site on 16th October 2009