Wireless backhaul in Asia Pacific: enabling the 5G era

Asia Pacific is seeing a second wave of 5G rollouts, which started in the middle of 2021 with the launch of commercial 5G services in Indonesia. Several other countries, including India, Malaysia and Vietnam, are soon to follow. This comes after a first wave of 5G rollouts in the region between 2018 and 2020, which resulted in 23 commercial networks, including four fixed wireless access (FWA) networks, in 12 countries. This activity is sparking renewed interest in mobile backhaul upgrades across the region to meet rising traffic demands. Although there is growing interest in fibre and satellite backhaul, wireless backhaul will likely remain the dominant technology in Asia Pacific. This will be underpinned by the growing role of E-band (71–86 GHz) solutions and new technical innovations to improve wireless backhaul performance.