Deployment of small cells is seen as a key avenue of boosting cellular capacity and adding network density, but commissioning have fallen short of projections, despite 2015 being viewed as a key year for small cells adoption.
As the heterogeneous network solutions continue to gain traction, a new research report suggests the Asia-Pacific market will “dominate deployments” through 2020, according to a recent publication from Rethink Research.
The researchers found that in 2017 and 2018, “APAC will account for almost 70% of deployments – by this time the early movers in North America will have completed the bulk of their rollouts while Chinese carriers will still be expanding rapidly, and India and Indonesia will be starting to roll out. By 2020, there will be significant growth in densely populated areas of Africa.”
This handy chart provides a distribution of projected deployments by geography:
The report findings are based on buying plans of the top 40 international mobile operator groups, which comprise some 80% of global mobile subscriptions, according to Rethink Research.
The researchers are betting the need for network densification will propel deployment of small cells; challenges to scalability will require industry solutions.
“Acceleration in small cell[s] deployment will be driven by the increasing pressures on macro-layer capacity and the consequent move to densify operator networks,” the report states. “Densification programs will rely on large scale to deliver their objectives, and so will rely on the industry supporting significant levels of automation and [total cost of ownership] reduction, barriers which we believe will be broken in 2016.”
