BEFORE LONG TERM EVOLUTION (LTE) can truly become the dominant wireless airlink, the technology has several formidable challenges that it must overcome, according to the market research firm In-Stat.
For starters, spectrum has to be cleared, licensed and either allocated or sold off before LTE takes hold. As every country has its own telecommunications regulations, these factors will take varying periods of time to be resolved.
In its report The State of the LTE Market: CAPEX, Deployments, Subscribers and Services, In-Stat outlines several major factors that it says must work in concert to affect the global LTE market:
– Chipset and device support – The Samsung Craft is the only commercially available LTE smart phone and there are few LTE dongles available to consumers (and no embedded LTE chipsets). Global chipset manufacturers and device manufacturers will catch up quickly, however, HSPA has more than 2600 certified devices, and Mobile WiMAX 802.16e chipsets are approaching the US$20 mark. The LTE market has much to do to catch up.
– Broadband caps and speed-throttling – Until late 2009, there really was no such thing as too little bandwidth. As operators add to their capacity and install equipment, a combination of broadband caps and speed-throttling will be necessary to keep current networks running optimally. In-Stat believes there will be some sticker-shock when customers are hit with a bill that has excessive tariffs for over-use. Mobile operators have scarcely used or needed broadband caps or speed-throttling, but will have to consider these options moving forward to better manage their networks.
– HSPA investments – As of September 2010, there were in excess of 400 HSPA networks deployed globally. None of these networks is more than five years old, and many have been deployed in the last year. Mobile operators will want to leverage their existing HSPA networks before moving on to LTE.
– LTE patents – The LTE patent pool for devices and technologies is far from being established. There were intense entanglements between major chipset companies in 3G patent infringements and the LTE community is looking at the same scary scenario. And if there are real patent-infringement issues, they will only become evident when LTE device shipments really get going.
"Some markets are warming toward LTE," said industry analyst, Chris Kiseel, in the press release. “Working through technology partners, Huawei and Ericsson, Vodafone purchased 1,500 base stations in Germany for LTE in 2010. On September 21, 2010, MetroPCS became the first US mobile operator to initiate LTE services with a launch in Las Vegas. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit have since followed and on December 6th, Verizon launched LTE services in 38 additional cities."
In-Stat forecasts that the number of LTE subscribers will approach 115 million by 2014.
