Wireless Infrastructure Spending To Flatten, Report Says

Spending by wireless operators on wireless base stations will flatten and even decline until 2008 although the actual number of installed base stations will increase slightly, according to a study released Monday by In-Stat/MDR.

Specifically, 2004 spending on base stations will decline by more than 14 percent compared to 2003, the study found. Part of the reason for that is that wireless operators have been installing base stations for next-generation services so aggressively, the study notes. But another reason is the spectrum efficiency offered by new base stations, meaning that wireless operators need fewer of them.

The trend of spending less on base stations will change slightly in 2008 as demand for cellular data services starts to increase significantly, according to the study. 3G services, particularly W-CDMA, will represent 23.1 percent of all base stations by 2008, the study predicts. Overall, GSM technologies will represent about 61.5 percent of all base station sales.