In its newly published market share and forecast report titled, “Mobile Backhaul Equipment and Services,” market research firm Infonetics (News - Alert) Research ranks mobile backhaul equipment vendors.

According to the report, there is a need for more base stations, more cell site connections, higher backhaul capacities, and equipment for each cell site connection due to the projected addition of almost 1.5 billion mobile subscribers and 1.6 billion mobile broadband subscribers between 2011 and 2015. Posting its best quarter in at least 2 years, Ericsson (News - Alert) increased its lead in mobile backhaul microwave radio equipment revenue share.

Apart from this, the report also analyzes mobile backhaul equipment, connections, cell sites, and service charges.

“As operators refresh their 2G networks and transition to 3G, they almost universally adopt IP/Ethernet as the mobile backhaul solution to lower the costs of growing mobile data traffic, using IP as the base technology for 3G, LTE, and WiMAX (News - Alert) networks,” explains Michael Howard, principal analyst of Infonetics Research. “89% of the money spent on mobile backhaul equipment in 2010 was for IP/Ethernet gear, with the fastest growth happening in Ethernet cell site routers”

 Registering a growth of 10.3% in 2010 over the previous year, the mobile backhaul equipment market grew to $6.84 billion worldwide, the report stated. Driven by demand for Ethernet-based radios for macro and smaller cell base transceiver stations, demand for Ethernet microwave equipment will remain healthy over the long term. Also, inhibiting revenue growth, unit pricing will gradually erode, particularly for hybrid TDM/Ethernet gear, the report stated.

Recently, the company released a new report where it stated that the VoIP services market recorded good growth in 2010 and touched nearly $ 50 billion mark in spite of the economic crisis. The report noted that NTT of Japan retained its leadership as the world's largest residential VoIP service provider, followed by Comcast (News - Alert) and France Télécom. The fastest growing segments of the VoIP services market are SIP trunking and hosted UC telephony.