LTE picking up speed
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) has recently published an update to its Evolution to LTE report which confirms that 156 operators in 64 countries are currently investing in LTE.
This figure comprizes 113 firm commitments by operators to deploy commercial LTE systems in 46 countries, and a further 43 “pre-commitment” trials or pilots in an additional 18 countries.
Seven operators have commercially launched LTE networks, in Austria, Norway, Poland, Sweden, USA, and Uzbekistan.
Alan Hadden, President of the GSA, said: “Operator commitment to LTE deployments is developing at least as fast as HSPA, demonstrating the industry’s rapid adoption of the next step for mobile broadband.”
The rapid increase in data traffic over the past 3 years, currently supported by HSPA and HSPA+ systems, is driving the interest in deploying LTE as quickly as possible.
Both 3GPP and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have formally recognized LTE and LTE-Advanced as a future-proofed roadmap for mobile operators who are deploying more and more advanced mobile broadband services.
Earlier this month the ITU announced it had accepted and officially designated LTE-Advanced as an IMT-Advanced (4G) technology. IMT-Advanced provides a global platform on which to build the next-generations of interactive mobile services that will provide faster data access, enhanced roaming capabilities, unified messaging and broadband multimedia.
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