Mobile Experts published its flagship forecast last week, with a thoroughly researched estimate of the scope for 6G deployment in the 2030-2033 cycle. In short, we expect the number of base stations to be about half of the numbers in the 4G and 5G cycles. Allow me to explain why.
We’ve built a sophisticated model of traffic growth for various applications, ranging from voice and video streaming to AI-driven traffic, AR/VR traffic, video chat and IoT traffic. Some of the results have been surprising, and we’ve pointed out some major errors in similar modeling done by Ericsson over the past year. In particular, we see that operators should pay attention to uplink traffic related to AI, and a few non-AI applications will drive significant traffic.
To be clear, our estimate for the size of the 6G wave is based on our models of traffic growth, broken down in each world region by application, by uplink/downlink and by multiple levels of population density (dense urban, urban, suburban and rural).
In addition to modeling new sources of data demand, we also calculate improvements in capacity to the network.
AI-for-RAN optimization will add a significant amount of capacity to a typical 5G network. New spectrum will come into the market. Massive MIMO and “Giga-MIMO” upgrades will add capacity. Satellites could actually play a role in the capacity model, not just for coverage. We’ve taken all of these into account.
In the end, yes, we do believe that more capacity will be added in specific urban markets. The latency requirements and other factors can be seen in the details of the model.
The 4G and 5G waves
In the 4G cycle, RAN vendors sold more than a million base stations per year for four years. During the 5G wave, the peak was about the same height but a shorter duration.
The most important reason was that 5G didn’t introduce any new applications that required nationwide coverage, so many network operators simply deployed 5G in the city and left LTE alone in the rural areas. The same thing will happen with 6G, at least until a new app creates enough value to justify the upgrade.
RAN revenue forecasts
But this is not the whole story. We see a reduction in hardware shipped into the RAN market, but a dramatic increase in revenue related to software upgrades. Our RAN Revenue forecast predicts a 28% CAGR for RAN network software, due to AI/ML software upgrades, the rise of vRAN, and Open RAN applications.
During the 4G and 5G cycles, I had almost 200 customers who primarily wanted information to understand “how many do we need to build?” Those days are over.
The mobile market is entering the commodity phase, where investment in new infrastructure will be limited, and more attention will be paid to optimization of the existing infrastructure.
Telcos will be fine-tuning things, so it’s important for all of us to understand the details of how they will improve efficiencies.
Joe Madden is principal analyst at Mobile Experts, a network of market and technology experts that analyzes wireless markets. Disclaimer: Nokia is a client of Mobile Experts.
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