DragonWave notes 5 industry trends for 2017, including more 5G, mergers between mobile operators, initial IoT deployments and a fourth major vendor.
Editor’s Note: With 2017 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from across the mobile telecommunications space on what they expect to see in the new year.
2016 was an exciting time for the mobile industry that included some expected developments, such as the maturing of the “5G” definition, the opening of new spectrum and increased Android competition. There were also some significant and largely unexpected events, including the Samsung Galaxy quality debacle; the reentry of Motorola, Google and Nokia in the handset space; and some notable mobile mergers like AT&T/Time Warner and Verizon Communications/Yahoo. While 2017 will surely bring more surprises, it is interesting to explore current trends and predict some of the major events for the coming year.
First commercial deployments of pre-5G
With the 2018 Winter Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, only 15 months away, 2017 will surely see the first commercial deployments of a pre-5G network in South Korea. It will be interesting to assess the level of advancement in the network as well as determining how much it might vary from the 5G standards that are still being drafted in parallel. Some U.S. operators have also announced intentions to deploy at least pilot pre-5G networks in 2017, targeting residential broadband as an alternative to fiber.
More mega-mergers among the mobile operators
With the change of government in the U.S., there has already been renewed discussion of a T-Mobile US and Sprint merger. 2016 was the year of the cable company mergers (with a bit of mobile flavor), but 2017 may be the year of mobile network mergers as operators target higher profitability off of their LTE investments before the full 5G investment cycle starts.
Start of commercial IoT services being offered
With the introduction of LTE Release 12 and the coming commercialization of LTE Release 13, the infrastructure is in place for a huge expansion of devices. I believe 2017 will see operators starting to offer plans that are more attractive for commercial machine usage. It will also see the introduction of more connected devices. The applications we will see are endless, including smart dog collars, vehicle tracking, temperature and environment sensors, and this is only the beginning.
Emergence of a fourth global vendor into the Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia mix
When we moved from 3G to LTE, there was massive consolidation among the mobile infrastructure vendors, where names like Motorola, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent disappeared. We now have just three major, global, mobile infrastructure providers. However, 5G brings disruption and that could allow a new major fourth competitor to emerge. Samsung and ZTE will certainly be two vendors trying to leverage the technology change as a path to increase market share. There may be more vendors that emerge in this area in 2017, as well.
Growth of all-outdoor small cell and start of wireless backhaul in support
Some initial outdoor small deployments finally got started in 2016, although they mostly leveraged existing fiber locations. In 2017, we will see these deployments expand and more operators will densify their networks with all outdoor small deployments. In order to achieve the coverage and capacity required, we will also see vendors start to stray away from fiber, and deploy more wireless backhaul solutions to connect their small cell locations.
These are a few of the key areas I expect to see shaping the industry in 2017, and I am sure there will be many more. What’s certain is that the coming year will be an active and exciting one for the mobile industry.
Greg Friesen is the VP of product management at DragonWave, responsible for global product management responsibilities across the company’s complete portfolio of products. This role includes regular interaction with customers to understand their evolving network requirements.
