Segment Highlights

The core-and-access equipment market saw a solid growth of around 50 percent during the year, on the back of a big spurt in 4G LTE rollouts. Operators also invested in VoLTE and LTE Advanced technologies, which is a long-term positive for the industry.

A good demand was seen for Ericsson’s RBS 6000 radio base station as well as for Nokia’s Single RAN technology, which make it possible to house support for 2G, 3G and 4G technologies in a single box.

The deals momentum slowed down a bit towards the end of fiscal 2016 but is likely to resume once again after the mega spectrum auction of 2016 gets concluded.

Managed service deals happened both as standalone ones as well as part of network rollout deals. The same held true of the OSS/BSS segment, which happens to be a highly fragmented market. The top three players together accounted for a mere 28 percent of revenue share.

Growth for the tower companies was a little impacted by the consolidations among their customers, i.e., the telcos. However, an ongoing push by telcos to improved coverage of their data networks, had a positive impact on the tenancies of towers.

The tower industry also saw some significant consolidationtaking place, with American Tower Company (ATC) acquiring a 51 percent stake in bigger rival Viom Networks. The combined entity created a stronger number two in the segment.