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Wireless trade association 4G Americas said that LTE connections reached 200 million at the end of 2013, with half of those coming from North America. The trade group also said that AT&T Mobility has already deployed LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation in Chicago, and that there are now seven LTE-Advanced networks globally in five countries, not counting AT&T Mobility.
LTE and HSPA, considered 3GPP mobile broadband technologies, counted 417 million connections in North America and Latin America at the end of last year and represent one-third of all mobile connections in the Americas, according to data from Informa Telecoms & Media. Kristin Paulin, a senior research analyst with Informa, said that LTE subscriber figures grew 151% year-over-year in North America and that “LTE is expected to grow at an even faster pace over the next five years in the region.”
Meanwhile, 2G GSM technology in the Americas declined at an annual rate of nearly 10% as subscribers migrated to mobile broadband.
“In the [United States] and Canada, LTE forges ahead with 26% market share at the end of 2013 on 46 commercial networks to date,” said Chris Pearson, president of 4G Americas. “As LTE is becoming a massively widespread next-generation technology, encompassing a wide variety of networks, operators are starting to make the shift towards LTE-Advanced to further increase data speeds, network efficiency and improve connectivity.”
LTE connections are expected to reach more than 258 million by the end of 2018.
Meanwhile, 4G Americas said that it is expected that all four national U.S. carriers will deploy LTE-Advanced this year.
“AT&T Mobility has deployed LTE-Advanced with carrier aggregation in the Chicago market already, though without a commercial announcement and with several other cities on stream, becoming the first such deployment of LTE carrier aggregation in the [United States],” according to the group.
As far as regional growth in the fourth quarter of 2013, data from Informa put figures at 22 million new LTE subscriptions in North America; nearly 11.6 million in Asia-Pacific; and almost five million more LTE connections in Western Europe.
“LTE showed significant gains worldwide in 2013 and particularly ramped up in the fourth quarter, and that trend will only magnify into 2014,” said Pearson.
