Telecom Lead India: Mobile service provider Bharti Airtel
has opted for LTE technology for launching mobile broadband services in Kolkata
due to several reasons. Before the BWA spectrum auction in 2010, most of the
telecom operators were looking at WiMAX for offering mobile broadband.
At the end of Q4 2011, the global LTE subscriber base
nearly doubled in size compared with the previous quarter to reach 12.02
million subscribers, showing a rapid adoption of LTE at the expense of WiMAX.
Indian telecom operators need to enhance ARPU. LTE is one
of the main sources.
LTE service revenues will enjoy an 80 percent cumulative
average growth rate over the next five years, reaching $291 billion at the end
of 2016, according to Mind Commerce.
LTE ARPUs will begin sliding as LTE moves beyond early
adopters.
“Driven by early adoption among the enterprise
users, LTE ARPUs will peak in 2012, reaching $88 per month, and drop down by a
year-over-year decline of 16 percent over the next five years as the consumer
market segment gains a higher market share,” said Asad Khan, Mind
Commerce’s lead analyst for 4G infrastructure, devices & services.
At the end of 2016, LTE ARPU will be $36 per month.
Research firm Maravedis recently said this
quarter-over-quarter subscriber increase for LTE and WiMAX was 92 percent and
14 percent, respectively, compared with the numbers at the end of Q3 2011.
At the end of 2011, 54 operators worldwide launched LTE commercially, 19 in Q4
alone. An additional 224 mobile operators committed to launching the technology
in the future, 193 of those with FDD-LTE and 31 with TD-LTE.
Maravedis anticipates that 469 million LTE subscribers
will be active by 2016, of which 25 percent (118 million) will be TD-LTE users
and the rest (75 percent or 350 million) will be FDD-LTE.
The region where the most TD-LTE trials had been taking place during Q4 was
APAC, with 18 operators trialing the technology, followed by Europe with 5
trials.
In India, all BWA spectrum licensees will gear up for LTE
launch in the next two years. These include Reliance Industries, Tikona,
Qualcomm, Aircel, Augere, etc.
The majority of LTE devices available today support the 700MHz band because the
predominant LTE deployments are from U.S. operators Verizon Wireless and
AT&T, which operate in that band.
Maravedis said the number of devices covered in the 2.6 GHz band will exceed
the devices deployed in the 700 MHz band. The 2.6 GHz band has been widely
allocated for mobile broadband across the world in both FDD and TD-LTE modes.
Multimode and multifrequency devices will gradually become the norm.
According to Mind Commerce, LTE subscriptions have already surpassed 7 million.
It will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent over the next five years and will reach
600 subscriptions by the end of 2016. At the end of 2016, the Asia Pacific
region will have 290 million LTE subscriptions.
While the Asia Pacific region will attain the highest
number of LTE subscriptions by 2016, the North America and Western Europe
regions will retain market leadership in terms of service revenues, accounting
for almost 60 percent of all LTE service revenues worldwide.
Mind Commerce said in 2016 as many as 30 percent of all
LTE subscriptions will be based on TD-LTE as prominent TD-LTE networks, such as
China Mobile’s planned deployment, reach maturity.
Indian operators’ Capex will be significantly less than
global operators.
Jefferies & Company recently said AT&T, Sprint
Nextel, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless will be spending heavily on LTE network.
AT&T’s LTE spending could increase two times this
year versus what was spent last year, but the operator is likewise slashing its
W-CDMA Capex in some areas.
Sprint plans $6 billion worth of capital spending this
year vs. only about $3 billion last year.
T-Mobile USA has committed $1.4 billion in additional
Capex spending over the network two years.
Indian operators can increase their spend in telecom
infrastructure. Will the government support with fast, transparent and long
term policies?
