Telecom Lead India: Mobile core gateway equipment for
packet core networks is likely to grow 19 percent from 2011 to more than $1.2
billion in 2012.
The substantial growth will be despite cut-backs in
network equipment spending by mobile network operators this year due to the
economic climate.
The vendors benefitting from the increase in EPC spend
include the five wireless network equipment vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent,
Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens Networks, and ZTE, as well as router vendors
such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks.
The big five will continue to dominate, though Cisco is
gaining some market share.
Though the 1Q 2012 spend for mobile core gateways shows a
0.1 percent growth compared to 1Q 2011 ABI Research expects the last two
quarters to be stronger as spend gets pushed towards end of the year.
The main driver for the increase in mobile gateway spend
is the deployment of 4G LTE networks, which require Evolved Packet Core
equipment. Mobile gateway spend for 4G networks will account for approximately
60 percent of the total in 2012.
Aditya Kaul, practice director of mobile networks, ABI
Research, said the recent network outages seen at O2 in the UK, Orange in
France, T-Mobile and Verizon in the US are all related to issues in the mobile
core. The insatiable demand for mobile broadband data and smartphones is
putting pressure on the scalability and reliability of mobile core elements,
which will ultimately drive operators to upgrade their mobile core.
The LTE EPC spend consists of P-Gateway, S-Gateway, MME,
and eHRPD equipment, which account for LTE EPC deployments in both WCDMA and
CDMA networks.
