According to ABI Research, driven by Bharti Airtel?s long term division (LTE) initiatives, the installed base of TD-LTE macro base station in India will reach almost one-third of the total global market in 2013.
The research firm points out that currently, the share of TD-LTE macro base stations in India is significant as the TD-LTE installed base in the country continues to grow at a double digit rate. In India, Bharti Airtel has taken the lead in expanding the reach of TD-LTE macro base stations with the roll-out of TD-LTE networks in Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune and Chandigarh. The segment will witness further growth with the expected launch of 4G in end-2013 by Reliance Jio Infocomm.
Further, globally, by 2018, there will be 1.467 billion LTE subscriptions; of those, 34 per cent will be LTE-Advanced (Release 10+) based networks, while 42 per cent and 24 per cent will be based-on the older Release 8/9 LTE-FDD and LTE-TDD networks, respectively. The LTE-Advanced network expansion will progress in a phased rollout with the carrier aggregation implementation being the first, followed by the enhanced Inter-cell interference coordination, coordinated multi-point, enhanced multiple-input/multiple-output, and HetNet support features which would help operators meet exponential increase in data traffic over the next few years.
Going forward, in 2015 Japan, South Korea, and China in the Asia-Pacific region will have the largest LTE-based macro base in 2015. These countries will be followed by Western Europe and North America, North America which will account for the majority of the LTE-Advanced installed base. The LTE-Advanced installed base in North America will be driven by operators such as Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile/MetroPCS, and Softbank/Sprint which plan to roll out LTE-Advanced-based networks in near future.
