By: Jesse Cryderman

As the first month of the year fades into memory, it’s safe to say that 2013 started with a bang. From global LTE deployments to mergers-and-acquisitions activity, the economic chill in telecommunications appears to be thawing. This is welcome news for network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) like Huawei, which forecast a 5 percent increase in equipment revenue, as well as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Both Gartner and Infonetics predict an uptick in spending by communications service providers (CSPs) this year, and even spending in Europe, which has been particularly hard hit by the ongoing economic crisis, is expected to increase as mobile service providers roll out LTE networks.

“With the announcement of AT&T’s and Deutsche Telekom’s multibillion-dollar investment plans, next year’s CAPEX [capital expenditures] outlay looks brighter,” says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics.

As CSPs seek to address the challenges of managing complex networks with skyrocketing data demands, the software market will also grow. “Where the carriers need the most help is designing and integrating their increasingly complex networks and minimizing outages from mobile traffic peaks,” Gartner analyst Deborah Kish told Reuters. “That often requires software solutions and technical advice, not only the hardware the big five vendors are used to selling.”

LTE deployments

There have already been numerous LTE announcements in 2013 that support the predicted growth trend.

The City of Light saw 4G LTE service arrive via two mobile carriers in the same week late last month: first, France Telecom-Orange deployed the high-speed mobile technology in Paris’s Opéra district, then SFR switched on its network in La Défense. NSN was the vendor partner for the latter company’s 4G launch. “As a long-term, trusted technology partner of SFR,” said Benoit Duchêne, head of the SFR customer business team at NSN, “we are very excited to bring our latest mobile broadband innovations to La Défense.”

NSN chalked up another win with U.S. Cellular, which revealed in mid-January how much work has been done on its network expansion and modernization plans. “We are building on this commitment by rapidly expanding the 4G LTE network, which currently covers 58 percent of our customers and will reach 87 percent of our customers by the end of this year,” said Michael Irizarry, executive vice president and chief technology officer for engineering and information services at U.S. Cellular. “Nokia Siemens Networks launched 11 of our markets to help us meet this aggressive timeline and completed the deployment of the core network elements ahead of schedule.”