US : The new world of muscled up mobile networks and applications is creating an ever-increasing need for backhaul and new strategies for doing so, a new Visant Strategies study finds. In addition to finding means to physically carry this increasing load carriers are also eager to mitigate additional increases in the roughly $3.5 billion they spent in 2006 for backhaul services, according to “US Mobile Backhaul: Evolving Market 2007.”

“Data services, including multi-media downloads, and network upgrades to WCDMA/HSDPA and EV-DO have led to a surge in backhaul use by mobile carriers,” said report author Andy Fuertes. “As carriers deploy these evolutionary air-interfaces they must also provide more robust ties between deployed infrastructure and the greater Internet and telecom networks since the newer apps will require bigger pipes to the outside telecom world.”

Increasing backhaul expenditures represents one hurdle carriers must overcome; physical limitations of copper and its inability to address towers with multiple high-speed base stations is a longer-term issue in almost half of all base stations deployed, the study finds.

“Roughly 20% of mobile base stations in the United States are backhauled via wireless technologies today,” said Larry Swasey of Visant Strategies, “while globally 65% of mobile base stations are linked via wireless backhaul. We see the number of base stations in the US using wireless for backhaul almost doubling by 2011 to help provide this higher backhaul capacity.”

Other backhaul practice changes include reducing those base stations with backhaul services of 6Mbps or less and allowing others to manage the infrastructure, backhaul and tower site.

The report details through 2011 US mobile backhaul traffic and revenues, the number of backhaul links employed as well as links by capacity and type. It also details PTP radio shipments, base station deployments, infrastructure with legacy switching and those with I/P-based switching, towers in use and co-location of infrastructure through 2011. 3G users, total subscribers, mobile television users, data contribution to traffic, among other figures, are also given through 2011.