LTE to Cover Half the Globe by 2017 – GSMA

LTE will cover half of the world, reaching one billion connections, by 2017, according to new research from the GSMA, but the balance of 4G power is shifting.

The GSM Association (GSMA) 's research arm, GSMA Intelligence, put out its latest 4G projections Tuesday, predicting that LTE will account for one in eight, or 1 billion out of 8 billion, global mobile connections in the next three years. That's up from the 176 million LTE connections reached to date.

The GSMA says nearly 500 LTE networks will be in service across 128 countries in 2017, roughly doubling the number that are live today. The biggest difference will be where the networks are. Today, about 20% of the global population is within an LTE network coverage range, but that number climbs to 90% in the US alone compared to 47% in Europe and 10% in Asia.

The US currently makes up 46% of global LTE connections, but by 2017, the GSMA expects Asia to account for 47% of the global connections as more networks are rolled out in markets such as China and India. Right now, South Korea is the world leader with half of its connections on LTE, compared to 20% in Japan and the US.

In other 4G tidbits, the GSMA also found that LTE users consume an average of 1.5GB of data per month, almost twice the amount consumed by non-LTE users. And, in developing countries, LTE users can generate ARPU that's seven to 20 times greater than non-LTE users. In developed markets, ARPU is around 10% to 40% higher.

LTE networks have been deployed in 12 different frequency bands to date, but four out of five live LTE networks are in one of four bands: 700MHz, 800MHz, 1800MHz, or 2600MHz. (See LTE Inches Closer to Roaming the Globe and LTE RF: Complicated by Design.)

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• GSA: 87 Devices Now Support LTE-Advanced

— Sarah Reedy, Senior Editor, Light Reading