14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Infonetics Research, one of the largest research companies based in the United States, has published the 4G Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey. The survey was mainly based on a series of questions answered by various operators regarding their future 4G network plans, deployment challenges, different 4G services and applications or strategies on the 4G network upgrades.
Results of the survey have revealed that 82% of the service-provider respondents will go with the WCDMA to LTE already-established deployment scenario, while 52% of them are thinking of deploying HSPA+ before LTE. Results also show that over 50% of the service providers that have participated in this survey are planning to offer 4G voice services within the first year after the official commercial launch.
Almost 50% of the total number of service providers that have responded expect 4G downlink speeds to be situated between 25Mbps and 50Mbps, while 42% have positioned downlink speeds at over 50Mbps.
After a quite unclear survey regarding voice migration conducted by Infonetics Research last year, in 2010, the majority of service providers has managed to establish a good voice migration strategy based on IMS as the key architecture. The 82% of service providers planning on launching mobile VPN services prove once again that mobile enterprise businesses have grown drastically in the past few years.
“Better spectral efficiency tops the list of technical drivers for service providers upgrading to 4G,” Richard Webb, directing analyst for WiMAX, microwave, and mobile devices at Infonetics, notes.
“We asked service providers around the world when they anticipate their 4G networks will be complete with commercial services running. Two-thirds said 2012 to 2014, which is a realistic timeframe when an equipment and device ecosystem based upon an IMT-Advanced definition of 4G seems likely,” Stéphane Téral, Infonetics Research’s principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure, adds.
The two analysts behind this survey are Richard Webb and Stéphane Téral. The 17 service providers that have participated in this survey total over 40% of the global telecom revenues.