Scaling 5G in Asia Pacific: the importance of wireless backhaul

The transition to 5G is gaining momentum in Asia Pacific. Over the period to 2025, 5G capex is set to accelerate as operators in advanced markets extend 5G coverage and 5G commercial launches occur in other countries across the region. According to the GSMA Intelligence Operators in Focus Survey, mobile operators in Asia Pacific expected around a fifth of their total network spend in 2021 to be on mobile backhaul.

Our survey of operators in the region shows meeting the capacity and speed requirements of 5G is the most important consideration for operators looking to modernise their transport networks. In addition, mobile backhaul upgrades will be needed to support new use cases, including ultra-reliable, low-latency communications (URLLC) applications.

Despite the growing role of fibre, wireless backhaul will remain integral in Asia Pacific, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. This will be driven by the growing maturity of E-band solutions (71-86 GHz) for mobile backhaul, which have the bandwidth to meet meeting the backhaul capacity requirements of cell sites in traffic hotspots. Furthermore, several technical solutions have emerged to boost the performance of wireless backhaul solutions, such as cross-polarisation interference cancellation, or XPIC, and line-of-sight MIMO.