9 telecom service providers in Asia Pacific are looking for upgrading their LTE networks to LTE-Advanced networks, said ABI Research.
ABI Research did not share the name of these telecoms.
Apart from Asia Pacific, 10 telecoms from Western Europe and 5 from North America are readying for LTE-Advanced.
ABI Research’s latest survey says there have been 29 LTE Advanced commitments worldwide by Q3 2013.
This will be a big boost to telecom equipment vendors such as Samsung, Ericsson, NSN, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE and Huawei.
Asia-Pacific will be the region with the most TD-LTE networks. Of global TD-LTE concluded contracts awarded to vendors so far, 47 percent come from Asia-Pacific and the second largest portion of 18 percent is contributed by the Middle East.
ABI Research also said in Asia-Pacific, TD-LTE networks will cover more than 53 percent of the population by 2018 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41.1 percent between 2012 and 2018, while FD-LTE networks will reach 49 percent population coverage by the end of 2018.
The increase of TD-LTE population coverage is mainly driven by wide deployment in some Asian countries with large populations, such as China, India, and Japan.
A number of FD-LTE operators will expand their networks with TD-LTE in additional spectrum to improve network capacity.
Among Asia-Pacific’s recently completed, on-going, and upcoming 4G spectrum auctions, 25 percent concern 2,600 MHz, 25 percent 1,800 MHz, and 20 percent 800 MHz, which is consistent with the popularity of the 2,600 MHz band for TD-LTE networks.
Pix source: SK Telecom
