The State of LTE Around the World

OpenSignal is a company that specializes in wireless coverage mapping. The company crowdsources data on carrier signal quality from users who have its consumer mobile application installed. Consumers can view the crowdsourced data either online or in-app in the form of color-coded maps designed to help in the purchasing decisions by showing unbiased data side-by-side from different carriers.

According to a recent OpenSignal report, speeds and 4G availability are crawling across the globe as wireless providers are deploying new networks in most regions of the world. It should come as no surprise that the countries that the countries first to deploy 4G LTE networks have greater coverage.

South Korea leads the way with 97 percent coverage, followed by Japan which boasts a 90 percent coverage rate and Hong Kong takes the third place slot with 86 percent. You would think that the TV commercials would give a more accurate description, but the truth of the matter is that while the U.S. began to deploy LTE networks in 2010, OpenSignal reports that only ranks fourth with 86 percent coverage.

The OpenSignal report takes a look at two different aspects of LTE, coverage and speeds. While the countries that got an earlier start in terms of deployment rank high in coverage, they seem to rank pretty low in terms of download speeds.

In fact, New Zealand takes top honors as having the fastest download speeds coming in at 36Mbps. Second and third place are not that much slower with Singapore offering 33Mbps speeds and Romania 30Mbps. The report looked at 68 countries and with speeds of only 10Mbps the U.S. was ranked at the 55 spot.

While it is true that the countries who were willing to take the chance and deploy LTE networks as they were in the maturing stage offer greater coverage, the fact of the matter is that little else was done after deployment.

Over the years, LTE technology has evolved and continued to mature. Countries, such as New Zealand and Romania were able to take advantage of true and tested technology, not to mention that they could by-pass the early mistakes seen in other countries.

OpenSignal explains that early adopters of LTE are also "suffering from their own success." Since the U.S. initially launched LTE networks, its subscriber base has continued to grow, giving it the higher marks for coverage. The problem is that the total number of subscribers has the tendency of bottlenecking the download speeds.

This is not really an issue for countries who have only begun to offer LTE services. Smaller subscriber bases lead to faster download speeds. Another factor is that newer deployments can take advantage of newer infrastructures, while existing infrastructures require updating and changes, which can be a very daunting challenge.