Dell’Oro says FWA spend is surging

According to the report, FWA has ‘surged’ in recent years in both residential and enterprise settings, which it attributes to ‘ease of deployment’ along with the more widespread availability of 4G LTE and 5G Sub-6GHz networks.

According to the report, FWA equipment spend will exceed $48 billion over the next five years, and it expects spending on 4G and 5G-enabled residential CPE to peak at $5.3 billion in 2025, and remain above $4 billion annually.

Its preliminary findings suggest total FWA revenues, including RAN equipment, residential CPE, and enterprise router and gateway revenue “remain on track to advance 7% in 2024, driven largely by residential subscriber growth in North America and India, as well as growing branch office connectivity more globally.”

The report also notes that total FWA equipment revenue for the 2023-2027 period have been revised upward by 17%, long-term subscriber growth is expected to occur in emerging markets in Southeast Asia and MEA, and that satellites will also be a “key enabler of broadband connectivity in emerging markets as well as rural markets where existing infrastructure either doesn’t exist or is cost-prohibitive to deploy.”

“Initially viewed as a way to monetize under-utilized spectrum, FWA has grown to become a major tool for connecting homes and businesses with broadband,” said Jeff Heynen, Vice President with the Dell’Oro Group. “What started in the US is now expanding to India, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, as mobile operators continue to expand their 5G-based FWA offerings to both residential and enterprise customers.”

Meanwhile a competitive ranking by API Research has placed ZTE is the leading 5G FWA CPE vendor, ahead of Nokia and Huawei “overall and across both the innovation and implementation criteria”.

The assessment ranked ten vendors' 5G FWA CPE portfolios, naming ZTE, Nokia and Huawei as ‘market leaders’, Inseego, Zyxel, Ericsson, Tozed, Kangwei and Vantiva as ‘mainstream’, and Arcadyn and Cisco as ‘followers’.

Larbi Belkhit, Industry Analyst at ABI Research said: “The 5G FWA market is rapidly growing and is now a proven monetization strategy for service providers. FWA of previous cellular generations was viewed as a backup or placeholder broadband technology for both the consumer and enterprise verticals; however, the advancements within both the 5G networks and CPE technology have allowed it to become considered a viable alternative to fixed broadband going forward.”

ZTE got strong scores across the innovation and implementation criteria of the report, we’re told, ranking first for both “due to their commercial success and their latest flagship CPE – the G5 Ultra – which utilizes AI technology to improve bandwidth efficiency and lower network congestion.”