There have been a lot of commercials on TV concerning 4G LTE coverage across the U.S. If you take all the maps from the four major, Tier 1 carriers and combine them, you will see that the LTE network covers nearly the entire country.
The continuing process of deploying LTE services is ongoing in Europe. Mostly this is still in the trial process. The most LTE network trials are in Central and Eastern Europe. According to a report from Analysys Mason, a global consultancy and research company specializing in telecom, media and technology, there are 26 trials going on in this area. There are also 20 trials currently underway in Western Europe.
Analysys Mason delivers strategy advice, operations support and market intelligence worldwide to commercial and public sector organizations.
The report shows that while North America and Europe are leading the way, operators are emerging in the Asian-Pacific and Latin America regions. These regions are getting set to challenge and try to take the lead away from Europe and Northern America.
While the U.S. has the world’s largest LTE network, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions have the highest number of planned LTE networks. Emerging market countries are also taking advantage of LTE technology. India, Malaysia and Vietnam are the leaders in the emerging Asia-Pacific region for the number of LTE networks planned.
Not to be left behind, operators in India, Malaysia and Nepal are also planning to launch TD-LTE networks. Adoption of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Band Plan (APT700) in Brazil, Chile, Columbia and Mexico provides operators and users in the Latin American region. This will give them access to the worldwide LTE700 ecosystem. This, in turn offers a broad choice of equipment and terminals.
Last week Australia’s Telstra, along with GSMA and GSA, launched a major promotion of the APT700 spectrum band for 4G networks. Analysys Mason states that the large number of frequencies that LTE supports has generated concern among industry players. However, in practice operators often need to support fewer than seven in order to provide a range of services for their users.
The report said, “We expect several operators in EMAP to deploy FD-/TD-LTE networks in order to take advantage of their paired and unpaired spectrum. Ten dual-technology LTE networks are already in commercial operation.”
The report also said, “Indicates that 59 LTE network trials were in progress as of 31 July 2013. This figure includes cases where an operator has multiple trials underway, but might not eventually deploy operational networks. However, we can reasonably expect (with more than 80 percent probability) that most of these trials will result in commercial deployment within the next two years.”
Analysys Mason forecasts that strong support for LTE in Asia-Pacific and Latin America will start to offset the early influence that European and North American operators have had so far. Some have about a two to three-year head start in deploying LTE services.
The firm expects that there will be a more balanced global LTE market emerging in the next five years. By 2018, markets such as Brazil, India and Russia will each account for about five percent of LTE connections worldwide.
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey 
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