Our SCF Market forecast report 2023 sheds light on the current state of mobile infrastructure deployment and the challenges faced by and opportunities open to the telecoms ecosystem.
The report provides valuable insights into the industry’s outlook based on surveys and forecasts conducted with 113 organizations worldwide, including tier 1 and 2 mobile operators, neutral hosts and other major service providers.
Key findings include:
- The installed base of small cells grew by 15% between 2021 and the end of 2022, and is predicted to grow by a similar amount in 2022-2023.
- By 2031, the start of a new generation of user experiences, plus the steady scaling-up of 5G and the start of 6G, will see small cell cumulative deployments crossing the 10-million mark.
- Over the next three years, the main sector drivers for network densification will be utilities and energy, followed by manufacturing, with local government in third place.
- Massive Indian deployments will result in CAGR of 24% in enterprise markets and 26% in public (urban and rural).
- South Asia will account for 22% of the total installed base of small cells by 2028, the largest single regional total, overtaking China’s base by the end of 2025.
- There will be strong momentum in emerging regions, especially Africa and Latin America, from 2025, while growth in North America will be the slowest by region (4.2% in enterprise and 5.6% in urban) because, like China, it deployed at scale from 2020 or earlier, and will see expansion proceeding at a reduced rate from 2025.