Dell’Oro Group’s most recent quarterly report on the mobile radio access network market found that the segment posted its third straight quarter of year-over-year growth – with LTE revenues growing and accounting for momentum despite declines in 2G and 3G.
“Year-over-year growth trends for the total RAN market continued to develop positively in the second quarter driven by double-digit growth in Latin America, North America, and Europe offsetting weaker momentum in the Asia Pacific region,” said Stefan Pongratz, director of mobile RAN research at Dell’Oro Group. “Although growth subsided somewhat versus the exceptionally strong 4Q12 and 1Q13 results, we continue to expect the total RAN market to generate growth in 2013, as a stronger second half in Asia should to some degree offset a more front-loaded North American RAN market,” said Pongratz.
The report found that Ericsson continues to lead in LTE RAN market share, with Huawei’s improving; those two companies accounted for 63% of the combined WCDMA/LTE RAN market.
–LTE network roll-outs will also help fuel a rebound in mobile cellular broadband modems and PCs with embedded cellular, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics.
That market segment saw an 8% year-over-year drop in 2012, but Strategy Analytics expects 2013 to be the year of turnaround, driven by widespread LTE network deployment, strong market demand and cellular routers for USB modem replacements. The market is expected to reach 250 million units by 2018, with LTE devices increasing by 187 million between 2012 and 2018, the analyst firm said.
“The mobile broadband modem market struggled in 2012, with a decline in vendor shipments overall, as market leaders Huawei and ZTE were unable to maintain the continued growth of previous years as overall spending on modems decreased during the recession as users became more cautious over spending on data plans for modems. Discretionary spending tended to favor smartphones and bolt-on plans for tethering in a number of cases, or spending was withheld altogether,” said Andrew Brown, executive director of enterprise research at Strategy Analytics, who authored the report.
“Nevertheless, the increasing dependence on persistent and ubiquitous connectivity, coupled with the widespread emergence of high-speed LTE networks, the multi-purpose nature of cellular hotspot routers that can connect up to eight consumer electronics devices via Wi-Fi and the opportunities in developed and emerging market means there is plenty of life left in the mobile broadband devices market,” Brown added.
—Dialogic said that Atlanta-based voice services provider Brightlink Communications deployed its session border controllers with gateway functionality, in order to enable media-rich communications and better service for wireless providers on multiple networks.
The Dialogic BorderNet 2020 SBCs were integrated in order to facilitate TDM to IP interconnects and SS7 protocol connectivity, and helped Brightlink improve its traffic performance measures over the system it was using previously, according to Dialogic. Brightlink now manages more than two billion minutes of customer capacity across the Dialogic SBCs, or more than a quarter of its North American service. The SBCs also provided transcoding and interoperability to handle faxing, and to better help the company handle unique call scenarios and call loads.
“With the Dialogic solution, we can improve our control of call quality and costs, as well as peer with new customers that don’t yet have SIP-capable networks in order to allow video, voice and data to successfully reach end users,” said Joe White, VP at Brightlink Communications.
“Voice service providers are bombarded with unique call scenarios worldwide,” said Andrew Goldberg, senior VP of marketing and strategy for Dialogic. “By normalizing traffic between disparate infrastructure and protocols,Dialogic’s system boosts any-to-any network connections to help voice provider leaders like Brightlink become more nimble while also expanding their service portfolio offerings.”
—Aruba Networks said that a publicly-funded Catholic school district in Ontario, Canada, is upgrading its network with Aruba equipment to serve more than 22,000 students and 2,000 faculty and staff.
The Durham Catholic District School Board wants to use mobile technology to improve teaching and prepare students for advanced technology use after they graduate. About 80% of its classrooms use some form of mobile, interactive technology such as laptops, iPads, smartphones, e-readers or iPods, plus about 400 interactive video projectors have been deployed in the last eight months.
The new network to support classroom interactivity will include more than 700 Aruba access points and allowed the district to choose a traditional controller-based deployment in some schools – such as the secondary schools, with a higher density of devices – and controller-less installation in places like the elementary buildings.
