There are no doubts LTE networks are coming. However, there are still some hurdles standing on the way of the upcoming standard’s mass adoption. For starters, spectrum has to be cleared, licensed, and either allocated or sold off before LTE takes hold. As every country has its own set of telecommunication regulations, these factors will take varying periods of time to be resolved. Despite that, In-Stat predicts that there will be almost 115 million LTE subscribers by 2014.
In the initial period, from 2009 to 2014, U.S. will lead the world in the LTE adoption with more LTE subscribers than the entire Asia/Pacific region by the end of 2014.
Other findings from the report include:
- The vast majority of LTE subscribers will be FDD-LTE, but TD-LTE will have a CAGR through 2014 of almost twice that of FDD-LTE.
- Vodafone purchased 1,500 LTE base stations from Huawei and Ericsson for the LTE network rollout in Germany.
- LTE networks will have better than half of all last mile backhaul capacity in North America by 2014.
- Japan will have the most LTE subscribers in Asia/Pacific by the end of 2014.
And you can get additional information from In-Stat’s website.