$8.6 billion reasons that LTE will arrive this year

Stan Beer
Monday, 12 January 2009 14:15

Business IT - Technology

A new report from telecoms market analyst ABI Research predicts that the next generation of wireless broadband known as LTE (Long Term Evolution) could be deployed in some parts of the world as early as this year. What's more, LTE networks could be widespread over the next four years, with carriers around the world tipped to spend at least US$8.6 billion on deployments.

With peak download speeds of 100Mbps plus, LTE is considered the evolutionary successor to the current HSPA 3G standard. However, operators need to secure large blocks of spectrum to achieve that sort of bandwidth.

Last month, global 3G standards body 3GPP stamped its seal of approval on LTE when it announced that it would include LTE specifications in its upcoming release 8 of the 3GPP standard.

Supporters of the WiMAX 3G standard, which has no clear evolutionary path to 4G, have claimed that commercial deployment of LTE is still at least three years away. However, that claim is starting to look rather hollow, with the new ABI report suggesting that LTE is just about here.

According to ABI, more than eighteen operators globally have announced LTE deployment plans, and the tough economy does not seem to have dampened their enthusiasm. In fact, Verizon has announced acceleration of its LTE deployment timetable, bringing the launch forward from 2010 to 2009. Many of the others are looking at a 2011-2012 timeframe, by which time, they hope, much of the current pain will have passed.

ABI Research senior analyst Nadine Manjaro, says:

“ABI Research believes that NTT will also deploy LTE in Japan in 2009. We forecast that by 2013 operators will spend over $8.6 billion on LTE base station infrastructure alone. For operators that have already deployed 3G networks, LTE will be a key CAPEX driver over the next five years.”

CONTINUED Page 2