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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Seven operators have commercially launched LTE networks, in Austria, Norway, Poland, Sweden, USA, and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n