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August 18, 2011

Majority of Operators Keen to Deploy HSPA+ before LTE: Infonetics Research

A recent Long Term Evolution (LTE) survey by market intelligence firm Infonetics Research shows that three fourth of operators will deploy High Speed Packet Access Evolved (HSPA+) before LTE. Telecom service provider will not rush to offer voice services over their LTE RAN.

Infonetics Research surveyed 74 percent of the operators from the 3GPP camp. They are unanimously planning to take the W-CDMA to HSPA+ to LTE migration path.

“As we anticipated back in 2008, HSPA+ is the default bridge to LTE and there is mounting evidence that LTE is the bridge to 4G (aka LTE-Advanced),” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile and FMC infrastructure at Infonetics Research, in a statement. “The early LTE adopters had solid compelling reasons to move to LTE swiftly but the 3GPP crowd remains pragmatic and will not put the cart before the horse.”

Eleven percent of surveyed respondents are deploying LTE as a greenfield network. Around two third of operators don't know when they will trial LTE-Advanced (aka true 4G). Five percent of the surveyed operators are testing the technology and 16 percent of respondents plan to trial LTE-Advanced in 2013, according to the Infonetics survey called “2011 LTE Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey.”

Forty seven percent of surveyed respondents said they would offer voice services three or more years after launching.

Around 50 percent of respondents said that it is very important to start construction of their LTE network with macrocells first, followed by a mix of small cells including microcell, picocells, femtocells as an augmentation to optimize coverage.

Recently, research agency In-Stat said the U.S. operator LTE CAPEX spending will drive wireless leadership from Asia and Europe to North America. From 2009 to 2014, more than one quarter of global LTE CAPEX spending will occur in the U.S. As a result, the U.S. will have more LTE subscribers than the entire Asia/Pacific region by the end of 2014.

 Want to learn more about 4G wireless technologies? Then be sure to attend the 4GWE Conference, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. The 4GWE Conference provides unmatched networking opportunities and a robust conference program representing the wireless ecosystem. The conference not only brings together the best and brightest in the wireless industry, it actually spans the communications and technology industry. To register, click here.



Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for MobilityTechzone. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell


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