Wireless Backhaul: Ceragon Receives $66 Million in Follow-on Orders from India's Tier 1 Operator

Ceragon Networks has recently received $66 Million in orders for its IP-20 Platform from a tier 1 operator in India. This order brings the total orders for Ceragon’s products and related professional services from tier 1 operators in India to over $100 million during the second half of 2017.

India’s tier 1 operators continue to rely on the capabilities of the IP-20 Platform to accomplish massive wireless backhaul network expansions as quickly and simply as possible, while also providing the foundation for future network densification.

Ceragon helps India’s operators to address the data boom challenge from their rapidly growing subscriber base – which is expected to aggressively continue over the next 2 years.

Shipments for these $66 Million follow-on orders will begin in December, and the company expects to be able to recognize approximately $10 million in revenue from these orders in the fourth quarter of 2017, with the balance of the revenue expected to be recognized mainly during the first half of 2018.

The receipt of these orders improves management’s visibility and reinforces its confidence in the expectation of a quarterly revenue run rate of between $75 and $80 million for the fourth quarter of 2017 and into 2018, as indicated during the third quarter results conference call on November 6, 2017.

By deploying IP-20 Platform Multicore backhaul radios, the operator can simplify installation and commissioning while providing high performance to deliver 4G services coverage with 500 Mbps to 1Gbps wireless backhaul as required in both urban and rural environments. To support the operator’s plans to aggressively expand its customer base, the IP-20 Platform enables 1-click doubling of capacity remotely, without the need to visit the sites, as well as achieving more capacity with one quarter of the amount of spectrum otherwise required.

Ceragon’s Multicore technology addresses this operator’s focus on building a future-proof network that is ready to support LTE-Advanced-Pro massive MIMO with 2Gbps capacity over the backhaul infrastructure. This will allow it to further expand services and increase speeds to its subscribers while overcoming spectrum constraints that are typical in this region.

According to the GSMA, a prominent industry association, India is the fastest growing mobile market in the world, measured by subscriber growth. Its most recent report indicates that India is expected to add more than 200 million subscribers by 2020 (compared to the end of 2016), reaching only 65% penetration by that date. A second trend not captured by this statistic is the transformation of subscriber behavior from using mainly voice services to becoming consumers of vast amounts of data as network-based services become an essential part of everyday life. The combination of these two trends is causing a data boom that is posing significant challenges to all mobile operators in the region.

“Mobile operators in India face multiple challenges based on the need to address immediate requirements driven by the developing data boom, while also planning for future capacity needs in a dynamic market of rapid subscriber growth and scarce spectrum resources,” said Ira Palti, president and CEO of Ceragon. “Our IP-20 Platform is ideal to address these varied backhaul challenges simultaneously, and we are proud to again support a new phase in this massive multi-year rollout. The major role Ceragon is playing in the region is illustrated by these new orders, together with several large orders from this customer and other Indian operators received earlier in the year.”