The worldwide self-organizing networks (SON) market is likely to garner revenue of $8.3 billion by 2022, with a CAGR of 11.1% from 2016 to 2022, according to a report by Allied Market Research. North America presently leads the market, on account of high investment in network technologies as well as wide internet penetration. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to emerge as the biggest market, surpassing North America during the forecast period, on account of the rapidly growing advanced cellular technologies such as LTE/4G and the large subscriber base, the market research firm said.
The report said that the 4G/LTE segment is expected to exhibit high growth potential as 4G/LTE network operators have started deploying SON to deliver streamlined network performance and improved service quality.
SON is being increasingly deployed by the telecom operators owing to benefits such as faster response time, improved network management, and self-healing network capabilities among others. SON is widely deployed in several cellular networks which include 2G/3G and 4G/long term evolution (LTE).
Among these, the already established 2G/3G cellular networks are expected to contribute over two-thirds of the overall market revenue, throughout the analysis period, owing to a wide coverage.
However, the 4G/LTE segment is expected to grow rapidly, with a CAGR of over 15.1% during the forecast period. This growth is likely to be driven by faster deployment of SON in the rapidly growing 4G/LTE cellular networks, primarily in the developed countries.
Within the different SON architectures, centralized (C-SON) architecture is more popular and widely accepted amongst network operators, worldwide. However, the hybrid self-organizing network segment (H-SON) is expected to witness highest growth during the forecast period, as it combines the features provided by S-SON and D-SON, such as optimization and real-time response in complex network arrangement.
H-SON architecture is anticipated to exhibit fastest growth throughout the forecast period, as it enables effective handling of heterogeneous network, reduces operation cost, and offers real-time response to network issues.
