Dell’Oro Group has announced that the wireless packet core equipment market is forecast to grow more than 20% annually to reach almost $6 billion by 2015. Evolved Packet Core, the emerging segment of this market, is forecast to expand more than 100% annually in revenues, while traditional packet core equipment is expected to grow in the single digits each year during the forecast period.
“Smartphone and tablet usage is expected to drive an 80% per year increase in wireless mobile data usage over the next five years,” said Chris DePuy, analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “Service Providers are responding to this surging data demand by purchasing wireless packet core equipment, and increasingly, evolved packet core equipment.” Evolved Packet Core equipment enables 4G data services and is backwards compatible to 3G.
Besides providing data capacity, products in the wireless core market enable service providers to differentiate and enable new tiers of services using Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) to tie into billing systems. “Service providers view evolved packet core equipment as more than bandwidth management systems. These systems are critical to managing the business models in the delivery of mobile data services,” said DePuy.
The report shows that the PCRF market is forecast to surge to over $600 milion in 2015.
Publicising a separate report, Dell’Oro Group also reported that service provider core voice equipment spending is expected to decline at a 2% rate through 2015. While the majority of carrier voice equipment revenues is expected to decline, the VoIP-only segment, which includes Voice Application Servers (VAS), Session Border Controllers (SBC) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) devices, is projected to grow over 20% annually.
Since 2002, spending on legacy equipment that connects wireline circuit switched networks to new Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) networks has totalled to over $20 billion. This large worldwide investment has resulted in widespread deployment of VoIP networks.
“We expect a robust growth of 43% in the wireless VoIP-only market through 2015, as emerging high-speed wireless networks experience voice upgrades,” said Chris DePuy.
“In addition, we expect so-called Over-The-Top (OTT) services such as Skype and Google Voice to provide both challenges and opportunities to the voice equipment industry during our forecast period. Despite our expectation of a net loss of wireline subscribers over the next five years, we expect the wireline VoIP-only segment to experience high single-digit growth through 2015, driven by service provider upgrades to an all IP network,” added DePuy.
A Dell’Oro report also shows how Voice over LTE (VoLTE) subscriber estimates and wireless VoIP-only 5-year revenue forecast relate to each other.
EPC Report: http://www.delloro.com/services_wirelesspacketcore.htm
Voice Core Report: http://www.delloro.com/services_carrieriptelephony.htm