New Drivers of Network and Equipment Market: Cloud Computing, 5G, and Autonomous Vehicles with Analysis and Forecasts, 2018 - 2023

If you are involved in forecasting, manufacturing, purchasing, or utilizing DWDM, ROADMs, network Routers and network Switches, this report will become your major tool. It offers forecasts for not only units (US and World-wide, 2018-2023) and market forecasts, but also breaks down those forecasts by a number of useful subdivisions.

Today's headlines, even in local newspapers, are full of discussions about events that will directly impact network requirements and equipment markets. Cloud Computing, Autonomous Vehicles, and 5G. are so pervasive that they are common in the mind of 'every-man'. The question for network operators, manufacturers, and everyone directly impacted by network requirements is if, how, and when these popular trends will affect my business. This report is dedicated to providing those answers, as well as to integrate those answers with the requirements expected from normal usage growth.

Each of these three "New Drivers" - Cloud Computing, Autonomous Vehicles, and 5G - is explained, examined and a forecast of network requirements impact is developed and presented. To reach an integrated forecast, a complete update to previous forecasts of network requirements through 2023 is developed.

This report is a continuation of IGI's Lightwave series. This series of reports was one of the earliest to identify the importance and applications of many network elements that underpin today's fiber communications systems. These include the ROADM (Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer), the DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplex) and Terabit Routers. This work continues that trend, identifying the impacts of developing technologies on the communications network.

A survey of telecommunications experts is used as an input to this forecast update. This report will use the technique of asking the experts for their view of the future and then distilling from that input (some of which will be contradictory) a consistent, unified, organized view of the next five years of telecommunications in North America. This update is then combined with the expected affect from the new drivers to achieve the overall forecast.

As a part of the consideration of developing equipment forecasts the expected capital investments of major carriers are considered. Also, a new forecast for network traffic by market segment is developed. These inputs are used in developing the unit forecasts.

A US forecast and a World forecast are developed and presented for DWDM, ROADMs, network Routers and network Switches. These forecasts are presented as units forecasts as well as market forecast. In each equipment section a description of the equipment and its major applications are provided.

A review of major vendors of each type of equipment concludes the main section of the report. Appendixes are provided that give detail for the survey used in the report, as well as providing information on traffic concepts.