Survey Sez 08/08/12

In a poll performed on its behalf, Amdocs believes service providers’ network planning and logistics departments will deploy millions of small cells as they seek to meet a more than 20-fold increase in data demand during the next five years. The survey found that 59 percent of service providers expect to deploy at least 10 times more small cells by 2017 than they did last year, yet almost half of network planners (47 percent) say a lack of network planning resources is the biggest challenge facing them today, leading to rollout delays. In addition, all service providers polled agreed the latest 4G and LTE technologies would deliver only part of the efficiencies required, and that service providers need sophisticated new network planning and management tools in addition to technologies that are part of the LTE specs, including Self-Organizing Networks…The Mobile Radio Access Network (RAN) LTE equipment market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 50 percent during the next five years, says Dell’Oro Group, and the growth in mobile broadband eventually will offset declining investments in CDMA/GSM/WiMAX.