E Band Radio Shipments to Grow Five-Fold Between 2010 and 2016

A new study, “Upper Millimeter 2011: Success in Mobile, Private and Public Safety Wireless,” from Visant Strategies found that continuing deployments of 3.5G and 4G mobile networks is driving upper millimeter radio sales.

According to the study, 3.5G and 4G build-outs in the near future will require one Gigabit and more of backhaul capacity between network aggregation points, leading to upper millimeter radio deployments for backhaul.

Visant Strategies finds the E Band is an attractive alternative for backhaul in urban and near urban environments when hundreds of megabits per second or more of capacity is needed.

“There is insufficient availability of lower PTP frequencies to carry backhaul capacity that is equal to E band, especially when the bar is placed at 1 Gigabit per second,” said Andy Fuertes of Visant Strategies, in a statement.

“3G base stations and aggregation points, in many cases, fall within the range of E band in urban and near urban areas and this trend will continue with dense HSPA plus, mobile WiMAX and LTE deployments,” Fuertes added

Visant Strategies estimates that E band radio shipments will grow five-fold between 2010 and 2016 with E band and 60 GHz radio revenues reaching over $500 million in 2016.

60 GHz radio shipments, according to Visant Strategies, will also grow roughly five-fold which is mainly driven by the increased use in private enterprise and government networks, among other market segments.

The agency said 60 GHz radios will do well in private and public safety wireless networks. “Upper millimeter radios on all fronts have improved greatly on price and performance the last decade as well, helping drive the market,” according to Larry Swasey of Visant Strategies.

The report gives insight on 3.5G and 4G deployments, 3.5G and 4G users and regional mobile trends which will lead to the use of upper millimeter radios. It includes shipments and revenues by region through 2016 of E-band and 60 GHz band radios as well as ASPs.

Earlier this year Visant Strategies revealed that mobile wireless operators will continue to utilize backhaul solutions from cable operators at an ever-increasing pace during the oncoming years.

The report had predicted that as mobile wireless operators in the United States continue to upgrade to 3.5G and 4G systems the need for increasing backhaul capacity at the edge of the network and between middle network elements is a perfect match for the fiber plant many cable operators have deployed in urban and dense suburban areas.