According to Analysys Mason, India will account for 5 per cent of long term evolution (LTE) subscribers worldwide by 2018. Other countries such as Brazil and Russia will also account for 5 per cent of the global LTE subscriber base by 2018.
Currently, Bharti Airtel is the leading 4G service provider in India. Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited, which has a pan-India 4G license, is yet to launch 4G using LTE-time division duplexing technology (LTE-TDD) technology. Other 4G licence holders such as Aircel and Tikona are going slow with the launch of 4G services.
Analysys Mason says that telecom operators worldwide are in the process of implementing LTE. The widespread adoption of LTE services in emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific and Latin America is set to challenge the early lead gained by European and North American operators in rolling out LTE services. The adoption of the Asia?Pacific Telecommunity Band Plan (APT700) in Brazil, Chile, Columbia and Mexico has provided operators and users in the LATAM region access to the worldwide LTE700 ecosystem, which offers a broad choice of equipment and terminals.
In APAC region, India, Malaysia and Vietnam are leading the rollout of LTE services. Operators in the APAC region are also planning to launch LTE-TDD networks. A large number of operators in APAC are expected to deploy FD/TDD-LTE networks in order to take advantage of their paired and unpaired spectrum. Ten dual-technology LTE networks are already in commercial operation.
The research firm asserts that the large number of frequencies that LTE supports has generated concern among industry players, but realistically operators often need to support fewer than seven frequencies to offer LTE services to consumers.
As of July 31, 2013 about 59 LTE network trials were in progress. The number includes cases where an operator has multiple trials underway, but might not eventually deploy operational networks. However, most of these trials will result in commercial deployment within the next two years. The largest number of LTE network trials is in Central and Eastern Europe (26), emerging APAC (24) and Western Europe (20).
