Rethink Technology Research has released its latest report as part of the RAN Research service. The report entitled ‘MNOs labor under 5G complexity, tough choices with many partners’ forecasts that MNOs will deploy 2.9m net additional macro and micro base stations (4G, 5G and multi-RAT) 2021 to 2026, increasing the 2020 total of just over 9m to 11.9m globally. About 820,000 of these will be brand new sites.
If operators made no changes to their current patterns of site sharing (as of 2020), that expansion of the network would require them to find and invest in at least 550,000 of those new site locations, collectively. In reality, if they adopt the sharing and wholesale strategies at the rate and scale they currently project, they will need to find only 110,000 new sites for macro and micro equipment. That saving will have a dramatic effect on the ROI models for their network build-outs.
The findings of this report are based on surveys and interviews from a global panel of 78 Tier 1 and 2 MNOs, 32 tower operators, and other neutral host infrastructure providers. The report shows that MNOs are looking at a significant shift in asset ownership and flow of investment that will reshape their cost base, with a greater emphasis on predictable opex than upfront capex.
