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2019 Broadband Access Market Outlook: Part 2 of 4

2019 is expected to be the year that Comcast, Mediacom, and others in the North American market move from lab and field trials of their remote PHY and remote MACPHY or RPD and RMD platforms to general availability. Equipment vendors are ramping up production of their node units to meet what is expected to be a major year of deployments in 2019. We expect Comcast to pursue its goal of using distributed access architecture, or DAA, to dramatically reduce service group sizes from an average of 300 to 400 homes to less than 100. Other operators, including Cox and Spectrum, will quickly follow suit.

We’ve already seen a number of deployments in Europe, particularly at Com Hem and Stofa, designed to help these cable operators roll out DOCSIS 3.1 services, while simultaneously moving away from their traditional, integrated CCAP platforms. Both operators face significant competition from fiber providers, so they view R-PHY as a stepping stone to either full duplex DOCSIS 3.1 or FTTH.

The move to DAAs sets the stage for cable operators not only to expand the bandwidth they can offer end customers by reducing service group sizes, but also to push more edge computing capabilities closer to subscribers. Current optical nodes are nothing more than layer 1 and layer 2 platforms focused primarily on converting radio frequency signals to optical and vice versa. RPD and RMD nodes introduce layer 3 capabilities, as well as a road map to edge computing for more localized media processing and decision-making for applications beyond high-speed internet. With these more intelligent nodes, cable operators can better deliver IoT and wireless services.

Managing an expanded network of intelligent nodes, however, will introduce new challenges, which cable operators hope to address by virtualizing their existing cable modem termination system, or CMTS, functions. By centralizing service orchestration and control, cable operators can potentially reduce the time to deployment for their new distributed infrastructure, as well as the operational costs associated with these new architectures.

For cable operators, virtualization brings scale. By virtualizing and distributing the data and control planes from previously centralized and self-contained hardware platforms, operators can ultimately rely on more generic equipment, while also preparing their networks for the anticipated deluge of traffic from IoT and 5G services.

In Part 3, I discuss operators’ implementation of early use cases for artificial intelligence and network automation.

Related blog:

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Typically, in the early part of the year, I survey the broadband landscape and identify what I believe will be the year’s top trends and technology choices that will result in new product introductions and new service rollouts around the world.

In this 2019 broadband access market outlook series, I first discuss the high-level business and technology trends that will have an impact on network operators. Next, I describe the anticipated trends in broadband access and home networking. Finally, I review how two specific trends—edge computing and virtualization–address the larger business challenges, such as managing an expanded network of intelligent nodes. Here are the posts in my series:


Part 1 of 4: Macro Trends

The margins provided by the services network operators will continue to be squeezed by increased competition, market saturation, and pressure from OTT and cloud companies, which can often distribute similar services and applications at a reduced price. As a result, network operators will continue to reduce the cost of delivering services by:

  • Moving more layer 3 functionality from dedicated access platforms and routers to servers in the cloud.
  • Automating the provisioning, management, and troubleshooting of all network services; and using artificial intelligence to anticipate faults and other network-related issues.
  • Increasingly moving away from proprietary hardware platforms in their access, edge, and core networks toward COTS hardware and servers with media gateway functionality.

Along those lines, a growing number of operators will divest their network assets and focus solely on content creation and distribution, while maintaining close relationships with underlying network operators to give them a competitive advantage over other OTT providers. Companies such as Crown Castle, American Tower, and other infrastructure providers are potential candidates for purchasing and managing network assets.

Those operators that don’t split out their network assets will continue to focus on the distribution of network platforms, intelligence, and workload processing. They will move away from centralized headends, data centers, and central offices to edge facilities, including hub sites, remote nodes, and modular edge data centers. Minimizing latency will become just as important to users as total broadband throughput. Operators that can deliver on both will secure the most subscribers and the highest revenue.

One ongoing challenge facing operators as they distribute more active electronics into their access networks is the scarcity of qualified labor to install, provision, and manage those platforms. Because of this labor shortage, operators will have to make smart and efficient decisions when it comes to deploying their technicians to install and provision these advanced platforms.

Though this is not an exhaustive list, I believe that these macro trends are under discussion among executives at many network operators. Operating a network is an extremely capital-intensive business. With the continued influx of software-based networking principles from the IT domain, data centers, and CDNs, service margins can certainly improve. Time will tell how quickly network operators embrace these principles throughout their access, edge, and core networks.

In Part 2, I discuss how cable operators use distributed access as their platform for edge computing and virtualization.

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First Commercial 5G Core expected in 2020

The latest Wireless Packet Core 5-Year Forecast report shows that the projected five-year compounded annual revenue growth rate (CAGR) for the Wireless Packet Core (WPC) market is 3 Percent (2018-2023).

“Initial 5G New Radio (5G NR) network launches are being implemented with 5G Non-standalone (5G NSA) architectures that utilize the 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC); therefore we have pushed out by one year (from 2019 to 2020), our expectations of when we will see the first commercial deployments of 5G Core,” said Dave Bolan, analyst with the Dell’Oro Group.

“WPC revenue growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period due primarily to subscriber growth, migration of more subscribers to VoLTE, and increasing data usage per subscriber. Other factors contributing to growth is the upgrade of EPC to a control and user plane separation (CUPS) architecture to handle 5G traffic and Internet of Things (IoT),” added Bolan.

Other highlights from the Wireless Packet Core 5-Year Forecast Report:

  • EPC will be the workhorse for the core throughout the forecast period. We expect it to peak in revenue in 2022. From a volume perspective, the number of sessions for EPC will increase through 2023.
  • The drive toward Network Function Virtualization (NFV) with cloud-native virtual network functions (VNFs) will continue in the forecast period increasing the share of the revenue to 88% in 2023.

The Dell’Oro Group Wireless Packet Core 5-Year Forecast Report offers a comprehensive overview of market trends by network function implementation (Non-NFV and NFV), covering revenue, sessions, average selling price, and regional forecasts for various network functions.

To access the full report, contact us at dgsales@delloro.com.

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The latest Dell’Oro Group Optical Transport 5-Year forecast report claims that the cumulative Optical Transport equipment spend is projected to approach $80 billion over the next five years. The majority of the Optical Transport revenue will be driven by demand for coherent 200+ Gbps wavelengths.

“The market demand for 100 Gbps will continue to be large, but all future optical transport market growth will be driven by sales of higher wavelength speeds,” said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell’Oro Group. “We believe service providers are still motivated to chase better spectral efficiencies to economically increase network capacity while maintaining their capital spend. Hence, the desire to migrate to higher wavelength speeds such as 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps. Fortunately, component and system manufacturers are striving to deliver better coherent solutions with each new product generation.  As a result, optical routes that once were only serviced by 100 Gbps wavelengths are now serviceable by 200 Gbps wavelengths and 400 Gbps in the future,” continued Yu.

Additional highlights from the Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast Report:

  • The cumulative spend on Optical Transport equipment during the next five years is projected to grow 16 percent.
  • Revenue from coherent 200+ Gbps DWDM shipments is forecast to grow at a 30 percent compounded annual growth rate.
  • Disaggregated WDM systems will be a larger share of the market.

About the report – The Dell’Oro Group Optical Transport 5-Year Forecast Report offers a complete overview of the Optical Transport industry with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, average selling prices, unit shipments, Tributary/Line or Wavelength shipments (by speed up to 600 Gbps).  The report tracks DWDM long haul terrestrial, WDM metro, multiservice multiplexers, and optical switch equipment.

To access the report, please contact us by email at dgsales@delloro.com.

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5G NR Expected to Advance at a Faster Pace Than LTE

The latest Mobile RAN 5-year forecast report claims the robust demand for 5G NR will propel the cumulative worldwide RAN market to nearly $160 B over the next five years.

“Even if 5G will be just another ‘G’ initially, the reality is that for the carriers with the right spectrum assets, the mid-band Massive MIMO business case can be extremely compelling for the MBB use case,” said Stefan Pongratz, analyst with the Dell’Oro Group. “At the same time, we are more optimistic today about the mmW opportunity than we were a year ago. But, clearly, it will take some with the current inter-site distances before the cost per GB economics will be as favorable with the mmW spectrum as the mid-band sub-6 GHz spectrum using the existing macro grid and Massive MIMO,” continued Pongratz.

Other highlights from the Mobile RAN 5-Year Forecast Report:

  • 5G NR will scale at a significantly faster pace than LTE.
  • Sub-6 GHz spectrum is expected to drive the lion share of the RAN capex (Figure 1).
  • New capex spending on IoT, Fixed Wireless Access, In-Building, and Public Safety opportunities for both private and public deployments will compose a double-digit share of the RAN market by 2023.
  • Sub-6 GHz Massive MIMO transceiver shipments are projected to eclipse 200 million.

Dell’Oro Group’s Mobile RAN 5-Year Forecast Report offers a complete overview of the Mobile RAN industry with tables covering manufacturers’ revenue, transceivers or RF carrier shipments, unit shipments for base station controllers, and base transceiver stations for 5GNR, 5G NR Sub 6 GHz, 5G NR mmW, LTE, LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA, GSM, CDMA, and WiMAX. The report also include splits for macro and non-residential small cells and Massive MIMO.

To access the report, please contact us by email at dgsales@delloro.com.