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Backhaul capacity evolution

Diverse capacity demands

Backhaul capacity evolution

Increasing mid- and high-band deployments will continue to drive backhaul needs.

The expansion of 5G is continuing. It is now forecast to pass 4G to become the dominant mobile access technology by subscription in 2028 and to account for 60 percent of all mobile subscriptions by 2029. To date, around 300 service providers have launched commercial 5G services and it is forecast that 75 percent of mobile data traffic will be served by 5G in 2029. 5G population coverage outside of mainland China has now reached around 40 percent, but with large regional variations where some markets are at around 10 percent. Global 5G population coverage is expected to increase significantly to up to 80 percent by the end of 2029, creating the potential for significant user data throughput increases. [1]

In most markets, with the exception of Europe, mid-band population coverage matches 5G population coverage reasonably well. As 5G coverage increases, so will deployments of mid-band. Today, high-band is more sparsely deployed and mainly found in the US.

Deployment of high-band will also increase, but more selectively than mid-band and with a focus on urban environments. In around 2030, we will see the introduction of 6G and this is expected to lead to more spectrum being released in the mid- and centimeter wave (cmWave) bands pending decisions at World Radiocommunication Conference 2027 (WRC-27). As it is too early for detailed analysis of these proposed new bands, they are not included in this year’s capacity table. For more on 6G spectrum, see the Ericsson white paper ‘6G spectrum – enabling the future mobile life beyond 2030’. [2]

Both mid-band deployments, with a large amount of spectrum and a high MIMO layer count, and high-band deployments, will enable a significant increase in user throughput, driving backhaul needs. Typical backhaul capacity requirements for distributed Radio Access Network (RAN) sites are shown in Figure 1. The table shows how variations in backhaul capacity requirements between regions, markets and service providers continue to be significant and are even increasing. These variations are the result of differences in service provider spectrum holdings, actual service provider spectrum deployments and deployed RAN features, such as carrier aggregation.

Figure 1: Backhaul capacity per distributed site

Backhaul capacity per distributed site

*High-band spectrum not deployed in rural regions. Source: Ericsson (2024)

Increased deployment of mid-band is expected to have the largest overall impact on the network, as it will be used in all regions and deployment areas. Some of the reasoning behind the formulation of the table can be found in the Ericsson blog ‘Backhaul end-site capacity: Guesswork or science?’ [3]

As backhaul capacity needs in mobile networks become more diverse, so will demands on backhaul transport networks. Both high capacity and flexibility will be needed to cover lower-bandwidth deployments efficiently. A thorough analysis of mobile network performance targets is key to finding the correct backhaul dimensioning.

Ericsson Microwave Outlook report 2024

The Ericsson Microwave Outlook report, published annually, contains the latest trends, developments and insights into wireless backhaul industry.

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