4G LTE Mobile Technology To Hit $100 Billion By 2014
4G LTE Mobile Technology $100bn By 2014
4G Long Term Evolution (LTE), the next generation of mobile services is expected to generate more than $100 billion ($62bn) globally by 2014.
Juniper Research have today published a major study of the market in which they suggest initial sales will be driven by business users with trade-ups to smartphones and laptops, rather than consumer demand.
Hower, Howard Wilcox, author of the Juniper Research study added that consumer demand – especially for streamed video and for online games – will overtake business use by 2015.
Wilcox said 90% of telecoms professionals surveyed by Juniper believed network operators’ price plans were likely to change as a result of the introduction of LTE. After evaluating three scenarios, Wilcox said, “the most optimistic view revealed scope for higher revenues and ARPU [average revenue per user] if network operators adopt premium pricing strategies for enterprise users.”
With 3G mobile networks now commonplace in the UK, attention has turned to next generation 4G LTE which could help to provide greater mobile coverage and increased capacity for current and future users.
The UK is expected to hold their own auction for the required 800MHz 4G radio frequencies in late 2012, but by then it is believed that there will be at least 55 commercial LTE networks in operation elsewhere.
The UK’s biggest mobile network operator, Everything Everywhere (E2), the merged Orange/T-Mobile network operator which has 27.9 million customers, recently dropped its legal objection to the proposed auction.
