Telecommunications Infrastructure Archives - Page 2 of 40

Announcement Roundup: CommScope, Cisco, Juniper, and Extreme are gearing up for growth in 2025

The past few months have seen a flurry of vendor announcements. Mobile World Congress (MWC) is looming, and while the conference has traditionally been centered on the telecommunications ecosystem, this year even enterprise networking vendors are under pressure to reveal the next generation products that will be showcased in MWC Barcelona.

After a Slow Start, Wi-Fi 7 hits mainstream and should have a “trickle-up” effect

It feels like ages since the first enterprise class Wi-Fi 7 Access Point (AP) was commercialized in 2Q23. A quick analysis shows that indeed, enterprise Wi-Fi 7 AP introductions have been slightly slower than previous Wi-Fi technologies. It took a full year (4 quarters in the diagram below) for a critical mass of seven vendors to commercialize a Wi-Fi 7 AP for enterprises.

Unlike past versions of WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network), the early Wi-Fi 7 market has been dominated by vendors from China. H3C took an early lead in commercializing the first Wi-Fi 7 AP and in 2024, Huawei shipped the lion’s share of the new technology.

However, over the past few months, a larger portfolio of Wi-Fi 7 APs has become available worldwide. More Wi-Fi 7 APs are supporting the full 6 GHz frequency band, and these APs are power-hungry. As enterprises plan to upgrade their WLAN, they are looking carefully at the LAN infrastructure to determine whether it has the capacity and power available to drive a fully functional Wi-Fi 7 network. Recent vendor announcements aim to address the upcoming opportunities:

On February 24^th, CommScope announced the deepening of their collaboration with Nokia to deliver an optical LAN-driven Wi-Fi 7 network. This partnership involves the integration of Nokia’s OLT into CommScope’s RUCKUS One platform. CommScope commercialized the first RUCKUS Wi-Fi 7 AP back in December 2023, so this solution is ideal for organizations looking for the savings and performance of a fiber LAN coupled with the latest Wi-Fi technology.
Cisco slipped the announcement of its 9172 and 9172H Wi-Fi 7 APs (the 2^nd and 3^rd in the Cisco portfolio) into the Cisco Live EMEA conference in February. Along with the APs, came the announcement of a new Meraki switch, the MS150. This is a cloud-managed multi gig switch, with 60W of PoE ++ to feed those hungry Wi-Fi 7 APs. Cisco is now delivering each Wi-Fi 7 AP in a single worldwide SKU, meaning that global organizations no longer have the complex task of managing inventory by country. The APs can be controlled and managed by a Catalyst controller or can be cloud-managed with the Meraki dashboard.
Also in February, Juniper introduced a new Campus Switch: the fixed form factor EX4000. It is also designed for customers wishing to increase PoE to their LAN, with a PoE budget of 960W. Juniper indicates that the switch is quick to boot (under 2 minutes) and comes with an Intelligent Energy feature which can automatically adjust fan speed and de-activate PoE when ports are not in use.

Announcements start with A (and end with “I”)

Wi-Fi 7’s higher performance comes at the cost of higher management complexity. Fortunately, more
AI-driven network operations features are becoming available, offering an early opportunity for enterprises to use AI to benefit their bottom lines. Three recent vendor announcements target the AIOps opportunity for enterprises:

CommScope’s February announcement highlights new AI features on RUCKUS One, the company’s network assurance platform. For instance, IntentAI^TM attaches network configurations to business outcomes, and EquiFlex^TM promises to boost network capacity by reducing congestion in high-density environments.
At Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam, Cisco announced new AIOps enhancements in Meraki (AI Assistant for trouble shooting) and an updated Wi-Fi 7 Radio Resource Management feature that uses an AI engine to more intelligently optimize radio configurations.
With 3 million devices managed in Extreme’s cloud, there is a sizeable potential for the company to offer enterprises advanced AIOps features. In December, Extreme announced Platform ONE, which will deliver an automated experience throughout a customer’s lifecycle. This means that as well as supporting configuration and anomaly detection, it will deliver business functions such as asset management, contract analysis and personalized analytics. In February, Extreme announced the platform would be available for its Managed Service Provider partners. Platform ONE will support Extreme’s portfolio of campus and WAN networking equipment and will be generally available in the second half of 2025. Extreme’s Wi-Fi 7 APs have been shipping since June 2024 and Platform ONE promises that WLAN can be configured in one-click, simplifying impending upgrades.

We are on the doorstep of accelerated Wi-Fi 7 adoption, and arguably, this upgrade will have the biggest impact on the Local Area Network since Wi-Fi was first introduced to the enterprise. 2024 was a difficult year for enterprise networking vendors, with plummeting orders and contracting revenues. Now, the industry digestion period is coming to an end, and enterprises must upgrade their LAN equipment if they want to stay competitive. Things are looking up for the 2025 campus networking market.

Mobile infrastructure investments slowed significantly in 2024. Preliminary findings indicate that the Radio Access Network (RAN) market contracted by 10 to 20% year-over-year (YoY) during the 1Q24 to 3Q24 period (final 4Q24 and full-year data expected around mid-February). Several factors contributed to this decline. First and foremost, the state of 5G coverage is impacting the market. According to Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report, 5G now covers approximately 55% of the global population. While the 5G macro-installed base is only halfway complete, macro shipment deployment growth is decelerating as year-over-year comparisons become increasingly challenging.

Also weighing on the capex is the disconnect between supply and demand. In the early days of 4G, mobile data traffic doubled annually, and limited bandwidths accelerated the transition to LTE-Advanced. In contrast, 5G deployments in the upper mid-band deliver a substantial capacity boost—sometimes more than doubling overall capacity. Combined with slower mobile data traffic growth, this has delayed the need for additional capacity-related investments.

In addition, the operators are struggling to monetize 5G beyond the known MBB use case scenarios. As a result, they are adopting a more cautious approach when balancing investments in maintaining existing services and exploring new applications.

These broader trends are not surprising. Heading into 2024, global RAN revenues were anticipated to decline at a mid-single-digit rate. However, with RAN on track to decline at a double-digit rate, it is evident that even though our predictions were correct directionally, we underestimated the scale of pullbacks in markets like Japan, India, and China. For instance, India and China were projected to decline by 30–50% and 5%, respectively, but initial results suggest the market is coming in below expectations.

Although market conditions showed signs of improvement in 3Q24, the overall state of the RAN market remains subdued. Looking ahead to 2025, the critical question is how this ongoing downturn will affect the broader RAN market and its sub-segments.

RAN conditions will improve in 2025

After two years of sharp declines, during which global RAN revenues fell by approximately 20% compared to 2022, we are cautiously optimistic about potential stabilization in 2025. Although the underlying drivers shaping the RAN market—slower 5G coverage expansion, postponed data traffic investments, and ongoing monetization challenges—are unlikely to change, regional variations are expected to be more favorable this year. Improved conditions in India, Japan, and North America may provide some relief, although reduced 5G activity in China will continue to exert downward pressure on the market. RAN revenues are projected to hold fairly steady globally and advance by 5% to 10%, excluding China.

Private wireless will grow >20%

Preliminary estimates indicate that private wireless is expanding at a healthy rate, aligning closely with the projections outlined a year ago. Growth is expected to reach 20% to 30% in 2024, slightly lower than the ~40% growth recorded in 2023. Nevertheless, private 5G remains in its early stages within the broader enterprise landscape, and it will take time for private RAN to secure a more substantial share of the overall RAN market.

Looking ahead, we forecast private wireless RAN revenues to grow by over 20% in 2025, driven by robust industrial adoption. Manufacturing emerged as the largest vertical in 2024, and based on current visibility, it is likely to retain its leading position this year.

Contract activity will lag revenues. According to the GSA database, the total number of GSA private wireless customer references reached 1603 in 3Q24, up 8% Q/Q and 25% Y/Y. Although the market is slowing based on this metric, this is also not a major cause of concern. Both operators and suppliers agree that the quality of the contracts is improving as deals are progressing beyond the PoC phase and increasingly include larger, multi-site, and even multi-country agreements, reflecting the shift from local to global deployments. In addition to the improved reach, the overall deal value is advancing significantly as the equipment suppliers/operators move away from selling just private wireless and instead sell connectivity with bundles (edge, apps, services, etc).

Open RAN to account for 5% to 10% of RAN

Open RAN revenues came in weaker than expected in 2024. Our latest report findings show worldwide Open RAN revenues are down 30% YoY over the first three quarters (vRAN revs are down 15% over the same period). While the leading RAN vendors outside of China are embracing most of the pillars shaping the Open RAN movement, the transition from a commercial perspective will be an evolution.

As a reminder, Open RAN investments accelerated rapidly in the initial phase between 2019 and 2022. Open RAN-based investments then declined in 2023 as activity in the US slowed. Market conditions remain challenging in 2024, and helping to explain the 30 % YoY decline for the 1Q24-3Q24 period is the state of the 5G market in Japan and the US combined with the commercial readiness of next-generation O-RAN ULPI interfaces.

Still, these speed bumps are not expected to derail the long-term trajectory. Short-term visibility is more uncertain, however. Even so, we are forecasting Open RAN revenues to grow in 2025, accounting for 5% to 10% of total RAN revenues (single-vendor Open RAN > multi-vendor Open RAN).

Dedicated FWA RAN < $1B

The market opportunity for DSL and fiber replacements or alternative solutions is vast. According to the ITU and Ericsson’s Mobility Report, approximately 35% of the world’s two billion households remain underserved, lacking broadband connectivity. Beyond these unconnected households, FWA technologies can also address the needs of secondary homes and small businesses. With nearly half of 5G operators supporting 5G FWA (GSA), fixed wireless is already a mature technology, boosting both the RAN and the broadband markets.

Despite these advancements, the fundamental economics driving FWA are not expected to shift significantly in 2025. While technological improvements are expanding the TAM, the business case remains constrained by the mobile network’s capacity and the ROI of dedicated FWA RAN deployments. Operators continue refining their targets, but the existing mobile network infrastructure offers the most favorable RAN economics.

Although operators are gradually increasing their investments in dedicated RAN solutions for high-traffic areas, mobile networks are expected to maintain dominance in the near term. According to our latest FWA report, which covers the broader FWA ecosystem—including 3GPP and non-3GPP RAN and devices—dedicated FWA RAN investments are projected to stay below $1 billion in 2025.

Market concentration to remain stable/increase

RAN remains a concentrated market, with the top 5 RAN suppliers accounting for 94% to 95% of the 1Q24-3Q24 RAN revenues. New technologies, architectures, and segments can, in some cases, present opportunities and attract vendors with smaller footprints.

Based on current visibility in the existing MBB market and expectations for new private 5G and dedicated FWA opportunities, which are likely to have a higher greenfield/brownfield ratio, we don’t expect any significant movement in the split between the top 5 and the Other suppliers.

In summary, conditions will improve in 2025, but it will still be another underwhelming year for the broader RAN ecosystem, characterized by challenging fundamentals. Nevertheless, certain sub-segments and regions are poised to perform well. As always, the competitive dynamics within the RAN market will remain intense. Please follow us and keep us honest as we monitor progress throughout 2025 (AI RAN and 6G will be discussed in separate updates).

We just wrapped up the 3Q24 reporting period. And per our latest RAN findings, 2024 is so far not a great year from an Open RAN revenue perspective. As a reminder, Open RAN investments accelerated at a torrid pace between 2019 and 2022. This remarkable ascent was then followed by a ~$0.5 B decline in 2023 as activity in the US slowed. Market conditions remain challenging in 2024, and helping to explain the 30 % year-over-year (Y/Y) decline for the 1Q24-3Q24 period is the state of the 5G market in Japan and the US combined with the commercial readiness of next-generation O-RAN ULPI technologies.

In other words, the long-term trajectory is positive, but the short-term picture remains blurry. With large-scale greenfield deployments now mostly in the past, the broader market sentiment will remain uncertain until 5G activity in the US/Japan improves or modernization projects utilizing the latest O-RAN ULPI interfaces firm up.

Additional Open RAN highlights from the 3Q2024 RAN Report:

Virtualized RAN is down 15 % Y/Y for the 1Q24-3Q24 period.
The top 3 Open RAN suppliers for the 1Q24-3Q24 period based on worldwide revenues are Samsung, NEC, and Fujitsu.
The top 3 vRAN suppliers for the 1Q24-3Q24 period based on worldwide revenues are Samsung, Fujitsu, and Ericsson.
Short-term projections have been revised downward, while the long-term outlook remains unchanged. Open RAN is now projected to comprise a mid-single-digit share of the 2024 RAN market and 8 to 10 % of the combined proprietary plus Open RAN 2025 revenues.

About the Report

Dell’Oro Group’s RAN Quarterly Report offers a complete overview of the RAN industry, with tables covering manufacturers’ and market revenue for multiple RAN segments, including 5G NR Sub-7 GHz, 5G NR mmWave, LTE, macro base stations and radios, small cells, Massive MIMO, Open RAN, and vRAN. The report also tracks the RAN market by region and includes a four-quarter outlook. To purchase this report, please contact us by email at dgsales@delloro.com.

Importance of Optical Transport

When asked to explain optical transport, people usually use automobiles and roads as an example. A person can reach their destination faster in a sports car than in a sedan since the former can travel at higher speeds. Adding more lanes reduces traffic or congestion, allowing vehicles to reach their destination on time without delay. These examples, using cars and roadways, are analogous to optical wavelength signal speed and dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM). While this metaphor is a great way to explain the purpose of DWDM technology, it fails to capture the importance.

I like to use trees to illustrate the importance of optical transport. Beneath every tree lies roots that ferry resources to the branches and leaves and must scale proportionally. If the root system is inadequate, the branches won’t receive enough nutrients and will eventually break. In general, the bigger and more stable the roots, the stronger and healthier the tree, as realized by the many healthy branches and leaves that we see.

In a service provider network, the optical transport layer plays a crucial role. It serves as the roots of a tree that supports all the branches of services offered to customers. Just as tree roots provide the necessary nutrients for healthy growth, the optical transport layer ensures better connectivity to homes, mobile devices, enterprises, and data centers. It needs to be robust enough to support all the services that operators want to deliver. Otherwise, the branch will break. Stated another way—like a tree, the customers see the branches, but they experience the network beneath it through its beauty.

Therefore, like a tree, with each new generation of access technology, there is a need for a new generation of optical transport. I bring this to your attention because of the visible work by service providers to roll out next-generation services, such as Mobile 5G Advanced and Fixed 5G Advanced (F5G Advanced), and enterprise investments in developing new applications using artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). These buzzword access technologies will need a matching optical transport layer to support the resources they need.

Next-Generation Services

Access is moving to a new generation of services that deliver higher speeds, lower latency, and greater reliability. Some of these service offerings include 50 Gbps PON to homes, 5G-Advanced to devices, and ultra-high-speed connections between AI/ML data centers. In some cases, the bandwidth at the network edge will need to double, and in many cases, it will need to increase by over 10 times. For example, in residential broadband, the market is moving from the current technology (2.5 Gbps PON) to 10 Gbps and then 50 Gbps PON. This means the backhaul capacity may need to increase by as much as 20x.

In addition, the applications run by end users over their network will determine the speed and architecture required by the service provider to meet consumer expectations on quality and latency. Imagine a customer with a broadband service of 10 Gbps using the operator’s 50 Gbps PON network playing a virtual reality game with the same latency and service quality as before. Was the higher price for the 10 Gbps connection worth it? Will they keep it? The answer is “no” to both. And while we do not know what applications and services will emerge from AI/ML, we do know they will require more bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and much higher network quality. Additionally, due to the higher power consumption of AI/ML systems, data centers are required to be geographically distributed and interconnected (DCI) with a high-speed, high-availability optical network.

Therefore, beyond the new generation of access technology, the optical transport layer must also be upgraded to match it. The roots of the tree must grow to support the bigger branches.

Next-Generation Optical Transport

What are the requirements for the next-generation optical transport network? To answer this, we listed some key optical network technologies that are mapped to critical customer needs.

(1) 400+ Gbps wavelength speeds: End users want faster connections to their devices, using new broadband access technologies that require higher backhaul speeds. Therefore, the transceiver speed in the aggregation, metro, and long-haul network will need to increase beyond the installed base of 100/200 Gbps. The optical transport network will need to move to at least 400 Gbps wavelengths and, ultimately, 800 Gbps to support the higher load placed on the network. Additionally, there are many benefits to moving to 400+ Gbps wavelengths, including higher network efficiency, less rack space, lower power per bit, and lower cost per bit.

(2) C+L band amplifiers and filters: Two factors heighten the need to increase the capacity per fiber. The first is that demand for bandwidth has risen every year since the beginning of the Internet era, and it will continue to rise for many more years into the future. The second reason is that, because of Shannon’s Limit, every new generation of wavelength speeds utilizes higher baud rates, consuming more spectrum. As a result of these factors, operators need fiber strands to carry more capacity. Otherwise, they will need to add more strands of fiber, which may not be possible, causing network congestion along some routes. The solution is to add more usable spectrum in a fiber.

Originally, optical equipment was designed to operate in 4 THz (80 channels @ 50 GHz) of fiber spectrum located in the C-band. Over time, equipment manufacturers increased it to 4.8 THz (96 channels @ 50 GHz). The next generation of equipment will inevitably be designed to operate in 6.0 THz (120 channels @ 50 GHz) of spectrum, referred to as Super C-band. This action alone increases the amount of bandwidth-per-fiber by 25 percent. The spectrum can be nearly doubled by adding L-band, which supports 100 channels @ 50 GHz. Consequently, a fiber that had a maximum capacity of 38.4 Tbps (calculated using a spectral efficiency of eight) can now support 88.0 Tbps.

(3) All optical transmission and switching: The speed of transmission is important, but for some applications that require real-time response and feedback, latency is critical. We mentioned gaming as one application for consumers, but there are numerous additional applications in industries such as medical, power utility, automotive, and aerospace, where lower latency is a major requirement. One way to improve or lower latency is to remove any points along the signal’s route where it must be read, processed, buffered, or converted to electrical and then back to optical. Hence, the approach would be to use optical transmission and switching, such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADM) or optical cross-connect (OXC), as much as possible.

(4) Mesh topology for shortest path and multi-path protection: Mesh topology has many benefits: reduction of the number of hops between endpoints, improved path protection, and increased network scalability. More importantly, due to the exponentially higher number of paths a signal can take versus a ring topology to its destination, network quality is dramatically improved, moving the network towards six 9s availability.

“At the Root of It All”

Optical Transport is the network layer that delivers on the services and features that consumers want. Hence, any upgrades or addition of new services to end users will require changes in the optical layer. Using our tree analogy: there is no tree without the roots, and there is no network without optical transport. Therefore, to support all the next generation of services (5G Advanced, F5G Advanced, AI/ML applications, and DCI) that operators and cloud service providers are rolling out and ensure a high-quality of experience, the optical transport layer must also be upgraded.

Late last week, Vecima Networks announced that it was acquiring Falcon V, a Polish developer of access network orchestration software designed to facilitate the deployment of vendor-agnostic DOCSIS, fiber, and wireless networks. The acquisition will help accelerate Vecima’s Entra vCMTS product development and help the company build closer ties to Charter as the cable operator continues its Distributed Access Architecture (DAA) network transformation. The deal also helps to soothe the sting of Vecima’s unsuccessful bid for the cable assets of Casa Systems, despite establishing itself as the stalking horse bid in the auction.

Falcon V, which originated in 2018 as a joint venture between Liberty Global and equipment supplier Vector Group, received an investment from Charter and Liberty Global in 2021 to focus on developing SDN and NFV solutions to allow for the deployment of open DAA systems. At the time of the investment, Charter was focused on deploying Remote MACPHY technology, as opposed to Comcast and other operators, who were moving forward with Remote PHY. Falcon V was said to be working on software that could accelerate vendor interoperability and help Charter move more quickly in the direction of Flexible MAC Architecture (FMA), which offered the operator far more flexibility in where it could locate the MAC (Media access control) function, be it in nodes, hub sites, headends, or centralized data centers.

But in October 2022, Charter changed direction and moved away from Remote MACPHY toward Remote PHY. That strategic shift left many wondering whether Falcon V would still have a role to play in Charter’s transition to DAA. In actuality, nothing changed much for the software supplier, as it was still focused on developing orchestration software as well as an interop testing suite designed to ensure Charter could have a truly open, vendor-agnostic DAA network.

In March 2023, Charter announced that it had selected Harmonic as a vCMTS and Remote PHY Device (RPD) technology supplier while also selecting Vecima as a supplier of its ERM 3 RPDs, which can be installed in its EN 9000 Generic Access Platform (GAP) nodes, all clearly indicating its commitment to a multi-vendor deployment. Vecima had already been selected as the lead supplier of Remote OLTs (R-OLTs) in Charter’s RDOF network buildouts and is presumably a lead supplier of these platforms in potential non-RDOF deployments, as well.

In September 2023, Vecima also announced it had entered into a warrant agreement with Charter, providing Charter the opportunity to purchase up to 361, 050 shares of Vecima stock through 2031 at a strike price of C$17.09 per warrant. That translates into an agreement of roughly US$4.5M and is dependent on Charter achieving certain spending targets.

So, even before the Falcon V acquisition, the relationship between Vecima and Charter was already strong. The addition of Falcon V and its employee base extends that relationship further into the realms of vCMTS, software orchestration, and DAA interop testing.

An Answer to Charter’s Interop Issues?

Back in February 2024, Charter’s Chris Winfrey announced that the start of phase two of its network transformation—the phase focused on RPD and vCMTS deployments—would be delayed from the beginning of the year to late 2024, at best. The culprit? DAA equipment certification delays due to greater-than-expected challenges with interop testing. Though Winfrey didn’t provide specifics on the delays, Charter’s multi-vendor strategy is already ambitious, especially when the company continues to build out RDOF properties with R-OLTs and is also trying to roll out new nodes and amplifiers.

Thus, Vecima’s acquisition of Falcon V could very well have been pushed by Charter as a way to reduce the number of discrete vendors it has to coordinate with as it goes through the interop and homologation process. Charter has already made financial commitments to both vendors, so why not advocate for a marriage to help potentially speed up the DAA rollout process? The double-edged sword of DAA network rollout delays and subscriber losses is beginning to weigh heavily on Charter’s investors. So, anything that its vendor partners can do to solve those issues will certainly be welcomed by the operator.

Accelerating Vecima’s vCMTS Development

Beyond tightening its relationship with Charter, the addition of Falcon V’s products, as well as its software development teams will certainly help bring Vecima’s Entra vCMTS platform to market more quickly so that it can compete with Harmonic and Commscope. Though the Falcon V acquisition doesn’t completely make up for missing out on acquiring Casa’s cable assets, including its Axyom vCMTS and vBNG platforms, it does help to add pieces to what is an incredibly complex platform.

Vecima needs to accelerate the time to market of its Entra platform, especially at a customer like Charter, which has said it wants to move forward with a multi-vendor core, not just a multi-vendor PHY layer. While the details of just what a multi-vendor core might look like and how it will benefit Charter with all of the many balls it already has in the air, it certainly represents an opportunity for Vecima to position itself with a major operator that has plans beyond just the upgrade of its HFC network.

Charter likely similarly views the vCMTS as Comcast: As an edge compute platform that will ultimately enable services beyond those in the DOCSIS realm. The first workload after vCMTS is vBNG to support FTTH services and then perhaps an AGF (Access Gateway Function) workload to deliver converged fixed and mobile services over the existing HFC plant. Beyond that, perhaps a truly converged fixed and mobile core.

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