Study: base station market set for revival

A new report from Informa Telecoms & Media predicts the struggling mobile base station market could be revived by mobile data traffic demands by 2011.
The report predicts mobile data traffic will grow nearly 1,100% to 1,925 petabytes by 2012 from 162 PB last year, driven by application such as mobile Internet browsing and video, and data-friendly devices like Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Global mobile traffic from YouTube and other mobile video streaming applications will grow sharply by 2012, said the report.
However, the report predicts operators will struggle to cope with the sharp increases in data traffic because popular flat-rate price plans will mean mobile data revenues will not keep up with traffic increases.
“We forecast that global mobile data revenues will only increase 77% from 2007 to 2012, compared to a 1088% increase in mobile data traffic over the same period,” said Mike Roberts, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media and author of the report. “This will push current mobile network costs and architectures to the breaking point, and will lead to everything from network sharing and spectrum refarming to the launch of femtocells and next-generation networks.”
Carriers are likely to be restrained with their infrastructure investments in the short time, but base station sales will rebound in 2011, predicts the report.