LTE to shake up vendor status quo

With an architecture based entirely on IP, the growth of LTE could result in a major shake up of the infrastructure vendor market. Data from the Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013, revealed that more than two-thirds of telecoms professionals (67.5 per cent) believe that the move to LTE will change the relative standings of equipment suppliers. Just 0.9 per cent strongly disagreed with this statement.

The move to IP-based networks could open up opportunities to IT and networking specialists, such as Cisco and Avaya, which have existing expertise in packet data.

In contrast, infrastructure vendors with a background in circuit switched deployments, such as NSN, Huawei and Ericsson, will need to expand their knowledge base. It has been noted however that NSN is still the market leader in terms of LTE contracts.

According to our survey of more than 2,000 industry professionals, 59.2 per cent of respondents believe that the market is ripe for new entrants, and relative newcomers such as Samsung, have a reasonable chance of success.

The survey also found that two-thirds (67.6 per cent) agreed or strongly agreed that network vendors need to have a healthy services business in order to remain competitive, while over half (58.5 per cent) of respondents believe that small and specialist vendors will struggle to succeed because of operators’ supportability and maintenance requirements.

There was also limited sympathy over the suggested plight of Chinese vendors; just 28.2 per cent of respondents agreed that Chinese vendors are being unfairly restricted outside of their domestic market on security grounds, while 40.8 per cent disagreed that they are. The remaining 31 per cent of respondents had no opinion on the matter.

The Telecoms.com Intelligence Industry Survey 2013, which will be published on February 18^th, collected data from almost 2,000 industry respondents, including 600 operator employees from 260 different operators worldwide.

To register to receive your free copy of the full report from the Telecoms.com Intelligence 2013 Industry Survey when it is released on February 18^th, clickhere.

The LTE World Summit, the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry, is taking place on the 24^th-26^thJune 2013, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands.Click here to download a flyer for the event.