Backhaul capacity requirements will grow 300 percent between 2009 and 2013, according to In-Stat (News - Alert). That should come as no surprise, given the explosion in bandwidth consumption now driven by mobile broadband applications and devices.

 

WiMAX (News - Alert) and Long Term Evolution, the fourth-generation network protocols, will require backhaul needs of 80-100 Mbps at any given tower site, where legacy mobile voice networks often get by with a single T1 or possibly two.

 

In all, 90,000 Gbps 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-Stat forecasts.

 

In Asia/Pacific, the cellular backhaul last mile backhaul capacity for LTE (News - Alert) alone will be 2,500 Gbps in 2013.