2013 Will See 80 Million LTE Connections

As the year 2011 is drawing to a close, analysts are looking ahead to see what each segment of IT will bring, and ABI Research expects some interesting things on the LTE field.

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the next step in wireless broadband, providing wider bandwidth than what is available today, both on the enterprise and consumer segments.

Obviously, the world will steadily move forward and adopt this and other, 4G technologies as time passes.

One might even say that this should happen as quickly as possible, since the existing infrastructure is already overworked by the rising number of connected devices, mobile especially.

ABI Research found that, indeed, the next two years will see a big increase in LTE connection, with 80 million as the projected level for the end of 2013.

“We are expecting to see more LTE networks lighting up in the next year or two, but operators are now taking a quieter approach when it comes to deployment,” said Fei Feng Seet, research analyst, wireless.

Saudi Arabia, for example, has three national operators: Mobily (Etihad Etisalat), Saudi Telecom Company (STC), and Zain Saudi Arabia.

All of them are rolling out TD-LTE networks with the 2.5 GHz licensed spectrum for WiMAX. They are aiming for nationwide coverage too.

Aero2 (Poland), for instance, has TD-LTE services on the 2.5 GHz band as well.

2.6GHz or 700 MHz are the other preferred spectrums, but they are definitely not the only ones either, since MobileOne (Singapore) has FD-LTE on 1.8 GHz.

All in all, the next few years will have more TD-LTE and FD-LTE devices and networks cropping up, along with millions of subscribers.

“The issue of insufficient spectrum echoes across various markets and is especially evident in developing regions as regulators are a bit slow in reacting to market needs,” notes Philip Solis, research director, mobile networks.