Peter Allen, president and CEO of DragonWave Inc., made the prediction Friday after releasing the Ottawa company's figures for the year ending Feb. 28, in which it lost CDN$6 million (US$5.1 million) on sales of CDN$43.3 million.
That was better than the $8.3 million it lost the previous year.
Last year's sales were a seven per cent increase over fiscal 2008 and were helped by CDN$11 million in revenues in the fourth quarter, the second highest in the company's history. Allen says that figure will be beaten in the first quarter.
The figures are some evidence that a number of mobile service providers are willing to spend on upgrading their networks despite the increasing global recession.
The company added 55 new customers during the year, and has already started receiving revenue from an unnamed North American provider -- believed to be Clearwire -- for $15 million worth of its Horizon radios. It's Clear division is starting to build a WiMAX network across the U.S.
In addition, a provider in Pakistan just chose DragonWave for the first phase of a network rollout. The company is looking at opportunities in the Asia Pacific, Caribbean and South Africa regions.
As a result, Allen felt able to boast that "the future is exciting and it's starting now," to financial analysts in a conference call.
"As I look forward I believe fiscal 2010 will be a breakout year for DragonWave, and we expect strong growth from existing customers."
"We're only at the very early stage of a network transition for mobile carriers as they reshape their networks for the major wave of increased mobile date as they deploy 3G, HSPA and 4G systems."
Carriers with 2G networks can handle traffic with copper lines between transmitters, he said. But once they shift to 3G and the increased data it will carry, carriers that don't have a fibre optic network will have to turn to wireless backhaul to meet the capacity, he maintained.
In a report issued last month, Infonetics Research of Campbell, Calif., noted that carriers are increasing their spending on Ethernet technologies in general, with Ethernet microwave for backhaul expected to be the fastest growing segment.
"One market that's completely defying the downturn in every part of the world is mobile backhaul," said Michael Howard, Infonetics' principal analyst. With handset users increasingly using their devices for data -- accessing Web pages, downloading music and sending video - many mobile providers are adding data capacity to their networks. But most backhaul has been designed for voice so traffic, in his words, is being "scrunched."
Infonetics calculates that in North America alone it will take five years to replace the copper cable connecting cellular sites with fibre. Meanwhile operators carriers like have to pay telcos that own the fixed lines billions of dollars in backhaul fees.
An alternative is microwave Ethernet backhaul, which can handle data packets. Infonetics believes that as of 2008 about seven per cent of cellular towers were connected by microwave. By 2011 that could reach 20 per cent, said Howard.
One Howard said that DragonWave faces is that competitors include industry giants such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and NEC.