Microwave backhaul is now used in about 80 percent of all mobile cell sites in India, due primarily to a lack of fiber infrastructure. Though fiber is scalable for increase in traffic from 3G/BWA, it is difficult to deploy (especially in dense urban or remote rural areas), so microwave backhaul dependency is bound to increase.

Three suppliers now account for about 90 percent of the microwave backhaul market in India, but projected growth and expansion will lead to new opportunities for other competitors.

Existing microwave backhaul infrastructure is low cost and low performance, which means operators will need to invest in new gear. Hybrid microwave backhaul is a key trend and is evolving toward IP radio. Femtocell and E-band technologies are likely to play a major role in microwave backhaul deployments in India. Upgrading existing infrastructure by combining microwave radio (TDM and Ethernet) leads to optimized bandwidth and increased throughput, reducing the capex.

The transition to all-IP will take time and will accelerate only when operators begin deploying Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile technologies. The key would be the transformation process adopted by different telcos to keep balance on total cost of ownership (TCO), technology and network complexity.