Top 25 LTE operators will reach over 200 million LTE subscribers by 2015

MONTREAL, CANADA: The top 25 LTE (committed) operators will reach a 3G/UMTS subscriber base of 1,087 million, of which 226.7 million will be served with dual mode 3G/LTE devices in 2015. This is according to the latest Maravedis research report entitled, "The Top 25 LTE Operator Commitments: Deployment Scenarios and Growth Opportunities".

Cintia Garza, Senior Analyst and co-author of the report highlights, "Seventy percent of the operators interviewed experienced a two-fold increase in the traffic traversing their mobile networks in 2009.

"Nearly 84 percent of mobile operators around the world will be moving from HSPA/HSPA+ in anticipation of their evolution to LTE, while only 16 percent of operators will move from CDMA/EVDO", commented Esteban Monturus, Senior Analyst for Europe.

"Many operators will deploy LTE as a data network overlay with fall back to 3G network coverage where LTE is not available. So far, only 40 percent of the operators interviewed are planning and doing trials for voice over LTE. We expect this figure to increase as operators near LTE rollout", said Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst and Report Advisor.

"In the foreseeable future, LTE will primarily be deployed into unused or newly acquired spectrum bands, including 700 MHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5-2.7 GHz BWA spectrum bands", added Basharat Ashai, co-author of the report.

Select key findings
* 242,000 accumulated LTE macro base stations will be deployed in 2015, up from 38,906 in 2013.
* Chinese and European carriers will drive the market after 2012.
* More than 80 percent of the top 25 LTE (committed) operators have selected vendors for their LTE trials.
* Ericsson, Huawei, and Alcatel-Lucent are the top three, best positioned vendors for LTE trials and deployment contracts.
* Network topology is changing towards smaller cells - 52 percent of the LTE committed operators are planning to deploy eNodeB microcells and picocells.
* 57 percent of the operators just use fiber backhaul - 12 percent use microwave and 31 percent use a mix of both.