2013/09/25 Infonetics survey identifies operators’ LTE deployment challenges,

Campbell, CALIFORNIA, September 20, 2013—Market research firm Infonetics Research released excerpts from its 2013 LTE Strategies and Vendor Leadership: Global Service Provider Survey, for which operators were interviewed about their Long Term Evolution (LTE) network drivers, deployment plans, challenges and service offerings.

“Installing the access leg of an LTE network or E-UTRAN is going smoothly for many of the operators we interviewed for our latest LTE study, though voice migration to LTE and LTE roaming have emerged as major issues in the core. So don’t expect a massive 2G/3G network shutdown anytime soon,” says Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research.

Téral adds: “Meanwhile, ‘increasing ARPU’ was among the top LTE upgrade drivers in our 2012 LTE survey, but it fell back this year. The ARPU boost was short-lived, suggesting that mobile operators need to charge a premium to recoup the cost of their LTE network investment.”

• The industry is in the midst of a second wave of LTE rollouts, with a total 248 commercial LTE networks in 87 countries anticipated by the end of 2013
• LTE-Advanced is gearing up for 4G prime time, with the 1st commercial deployment launched in June 2013 by SK Telecom
• Heterogeneous solutions comprising macrocells, microcells, picocells and metrocells are gaining momentum for both 3G and LTE networks
• Operator respondents rate Ericsson, Huawei and NSN as the top LTE equipment manufacturers, with Alcatel-Lucent close behind