MWC Barcelona - Macro Cells and DAS Demand
An industry source commented on potentially disruptive plans by Cavium Inc. to apply its small-cell SoC technology to macro base stations, replacing traditional FPGA-based architectures. The technology is expected to hit the market later this year and to be deployed in 2016 by at least one large equipment vendor. (Sources in OTR Global’s Jan. 30 note said they expected ASIC and hybrid [ASIC/FPGA combo] SoCs to replace FPGAs in macro base stations for some network equipment vendors during 2015.) “This solution will be a significant savings; if before [the FPGA-based solution] was a few thousand dollars, then [the small-cell-based solution] will be half that. Cost pressure on OEMs is fierce, and existing FPGA architectures are incredibly expensive and inefficient. This industry just isn’t big enough for boutique solutions,” he said. The source added, “It’s bad for the FPGA guys like Xilinx [Inc.] and Altera [Corp.], as well as Texas Instruments [Inc.]. It’s good for Cavium, Qualcomm [Inc.] -- who will do something similar -- and the [macro base station] OEMs.”
DAS Sector Buoyant for Now
Sources said while the small cells market in general remains quite slow with carriers still cautious about large-scale rollouts, there are nonetheless pockets of high activity. “There was a lot of small cells hype, and the 3G products were finished at a time when carriers reduced 3G capex. Now everyone has switched to LTE, but the priority so far has been for coverage using macro cells, not small cells. The exception is residential, where Cisco [Systems Inc.] is still selling an incredible amount of units into AT&T [Inc.], and Samsung [Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930 KS)] into Sprint [Corp.],” one said.
Still, the source said the distributed antenna system (DAS) market is particularly strong. “DAS is going very well, and vendors like CommScope [Holding Company Inc.], Axell [Corp.] and [McWane Inc.'s] Zinwave have some very good products. It’s a familiar technology, but they've made some incremental advances to make it a bit better,” he said. However, he added, while DAS demand is strong, spending is likely to be front-end loaded. “For a very large building, DAS is definitely the way to go, but the breakeven size is pretty huge, and there aren’t many buildings left of that size. There will be fewer and fewer opportunities, and you will see more crossovers with things like the [Telefonaktiebolaget LM] Ericsson Radio Dot,” he said. Ericsson’s Radio Dot system is growing in popularity among a number of carriers. As part of its wider advocacy of carrier aggregation technology, Telefonica S.A. demonstrated Ericsson’s Radio Dot system integrated into a commercial LTE-A network, describing its performance as significantly better than current indoor solutions, such as DAS, in terms of radio quality and capacity/performance.
Juniper Security Plans Taking Shape
A Juniper Networks Inc. channel source discussed the vendor’s security plans following the sale of its Junos Pulse SSL VPN business and said it is planning to stop producing standalone versions of two more security products. “Juniper reacted quite badly to the various leaks about its plans to drop security products [DDoS Secure, its distributed denial-of-service offering, and Junos WebApp Secure, its Web application security offering; see OTR Global’s Nov. 26 note]. What we’ve been told to say is that they’ve stopped selling the DDoS and WebApp products but that they haven’t stopped porting the functionality, though they are not clear on what they mean by that. Customers cannot buy these products as they are no longer on the price list. It’s in limbo,” he said.
The source added the most likely scenario is for Juniper to add DDoS and Web application security functionality into its SRX Series Services Gateways. “My hope is these functionalities will be ported into SRX, but I haven’t had it confirmed. I’m not hearing anything about plans to move security into switching and routing, but Juniper has some overpowered switches and very powerful chipsets, so it would make enormous sense to do that," he said. A very large carrier customer said despite Juniper’s recent troubles, he has become increasingly optimistic following the appointment of Rami Rahim as CEO. “They need to sort out what they're doing with security in particular, but Rami is a great guy, and he should sort things out,” he said.
