- RAN revenue to grow at 0% CAGR over next five years
- 5G investments will not offset declining LTE revenues
What happened: RAN market outlook remains uninspiring, Dell’Oro Group warns
According to a new forecast report from Dell’Oro Group, the global Radio Access Network (RAN) market is expected to grow at a 0% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years. Despite slight improvements in market conditions, the broader RAN ecosystem remains underwhelming due to regional imbalances in 5G coverage, slower data traffic growth, and ongoing monetisation challenges.
While the period of rapid 5G investments from 2017 to 2021 has tapered off, the outlook for RAN remains subdued in the long term. Stefan Pongratz, Vice President for RAN market research at Dell’Oro Group, pointed out that regional disparities would continue to influence market dynamics in the short term.
In the longer term, he cautioned that new revenue streams from private wireless and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), alongside capacity growth from Mobile Broadband (MBB), would not be sufficient to offset the slowdown in MBB coverage-based capital expenditures.
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Why it’s important
The long-term forecast for the RAN market signals that global revenue growth will stagnate in the coming years, with a notable decline in LTE revenues. The shift from coverage to capacity, coupled with slower mobile data traffic growth, represents a key risk to the market’s overall expansion.
Although private wireless and FWA investments are expected to show growth, the transition may not be rapid enough to significantly impact the broader RAN sector. Operators are expected to gradually transition from 5G to 5G-Advanced, but without a major capex cycle driving spending.
This forecast highlights the challenges the RAN market will face in sustaining growth in the coming years and reflects the broader uncertainties surrounding mobile data traffic and the evolution of 5G use cases.
