Strategy Analytics (News - Alert) predicts that by 2017, one billion devices worldwide will be connected to LTE (News - Alert). The current number of connections is 10 million and should be 90 million by the end of 2012 alone.
LTE will therefore hit the billion threshold in seven to eight years. CDMA, on the other hand, is expected to take 11 years to hit the same milestone. With LTE growing at such a phenomenal rate, have companies that have invested in CDMA, including HSPA+, set themselves up for a major failure?
The answer is “no.” For proof, compare Sprint and T-Mobile’s (News - Alert) strategies for 4G LTE deployments.
At the CTIA Convention in early May, Sprint revealed its strategy, which is to enhance its 3G CDMA networks while still deploying 4G LTE in the 1900 and 800 MHz bands. T-Mobile also revealed plans to deploy a 4G LTE network. Sprint (News - Alert) will also have 15 devices available that utilize 4G LTE by the end of 2012, including the EVO 4G LTE and data cards.
T-Mobile, on the other hand, has decided to shut down most of its 2G GSM capacity to focus entirely on 4G. Fifty percent of voice and 90 percent of data currently runs over T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. T-Mobile plans to shift HSPA+ to the PCS band, which will open up its AWS bands for 4G LTE deployments. Additionally, the shift may also be enough to land T-Mobile a seat at the iPhone (News - Alert) table.
This could make T-Mobile a major player at the LTE table, with a 4G LTE network as large as Verizon’s and double the size of Sprint’s.
If LTE hits the billion mark in 2017, it will represent just 15 percent of the world’s network connections. This means that 3G technology, like CDMA, will still have a place in the world for some time.
“It has taken some time to warm up, but operator sentiment toward LTE has improved significantly over the last year,” explained Phil Kendall, director of Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Operator Strategies service.
“The LTE smartphone market is providing this sudden lift, with LTE's medium-term potential boosted by the much greater scale in today's mobile market: WCDMA launched into a world of fewer than one billion mobile connections, whereas we have over six billion connections today.”
Edited by Brooke Neuman