Analyst company Dell’Oro Group predicted global RAN revenues will stabilise in the period towards the end of the decade after two years of sharp declines, though it still expects the market to trend downwards.

Its latest five-year forecast for RAN revenue covering 2025-2029 predicts a compound annual growth rate of -1 per cent, with rapidly declining sales of LTE kit offsetting investment in 5G. Over the period, the market is expected to rake in a total of $160 billion.

The company’s forecast omits services from the total.

Dell’Oro VP for RAN market research Stefan Pongratz said “after two consecutive years of steep declines that wiped out nearly $9 billion of RAN equipment revenues globally, it is encouraging that market conditions are now stabilising”.

However, he cautioned not to get “too excited and assume a swift recovery” as “market conditions can fluctuate over the short term”. 

No magic boost
The analyst house noted although open RAN, cloud RAN and AI RAN will “play an important role going forward,” they are not expected to move the needle on overall market revenue.

When it comes to 5G-Advanced, Dell’Oro anticipates it will not provide a major market boost, with operators likely to gradually transition spending from 5G and stick within existing budgets.

A factor cited as the “most significant downward” risk was if mobile data traffic growth decelerated more than expected. It noted this could lead operators to move into “maintenance mode” following the completion of 5G coverage.

On a more optimistic note, it highlighted a potential upside which could push the market is in “non-traditional RAN growth vehicles,” including fixed wireless access, private networks and public safety deployments.

Individual segments expected to grow over its forecast period includ 5G New Radio, mmWave, open Ran, vRAN, private networks, small cells, massive MIMO and AI RAN.