The worldwide centralized RAN (C-RAN) architecture revenue is forecast to top $12 billion in 2020 - a CAGR of 19.8 percent from 2015 to 2020 - primarily driven by RAN expansion in the West and the beginning of 5G rollouts in Japan and South Korea, according to market research firm, IHS Technology. Operators worldwide are deploying C-RAN architectures to bring simplicity, agility, flexibility and efficiency to mobile networks.
The market research firm notes that the global C-RAN architecture equipment revenue reached $5 billion in 2015, a gain of 18 percent from $4.3 billion in 2014 with the market driven mainly by Asia Pacific. The most expensive component in a C-RAN architecture, baseband units (BBUs) accounted for the bulk of C-RAN revenue in 2015.
IHS highlights that China ia now in the driver’s seat thanks to China Mobile’s and China Unicom’s C-RAN deployments, followed by Japan with NTT DOCOMO’s “advanced C-RAN architecture” rollout. A few C-RAN deployments also took place in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and Canada during the year.
The market research firm notes that in 2015, China Mobile and China Unicom finally managed to convince their government that C-RAN was the right way to go to achieve energy savings of about 60 percent and have a green footprint. The Chinese operators have aggressive 5G research and development initiatives that include C-RAN. China Mobile has deployed C-RAN in three cities and one province, which led to a rollout of 2,000 sites, added IHS.
In 2016, IHS expects more C-RAN rollouts in China, along with a few in CALA (Caribbean and Latin America) and Europe, where operators will start to adopt C-RAN as a means to expand their existing footprints by connecting remote radio heads (RRHs) to BBUs of installed base transceiver stations (BTSs).
