Juniper, ABI Research forecast big numbers for LTE

According to a new report from Juniper Research, the number of Long Term Evolution (LTE) subscribers is expected to exceed 100 million by 2014, a number buoyed by embedded devices such as MP3 players, netbooks and digital cameras.

"There is intense activity in the LTE market right now, with in excess of 30 network operator commitments. Operators and vendors alike are moving rapidly to jump on the road to LTE, attracted by the connectivity-based opportunities that the technology offers. Sony, for example, announced that network connectivity is one of 3 top priority actions," said Howard Wilcox, author of the report.

In another report, ABI Research said wireless operators will spend about $3.3 billion building LTE base stations in 2011 to purchase some 142,000 base stations worldwide. LTE base station equipment spending is expected to rise sharply between 2011 and the end of 2012.

"Vendors will be shipping base station equipment in significant quantities in 2010 ahead of limited trials that typically last about a year, followed by full commercial launches," says senior analyst Nadine Manjaro. "Many operators have been talking about re-use of existing equipment, but ABI Research understands that while there may be sharing of masts and cabinets most of those 142,000 base stations will have completely new baseband and RF components, because operators will generally try to keep the new LTE networks separate from their legacy networks."

For more:
- check out Mobile Europe [1]
- see this release [2]

Related articles:
Vodafone: LTE viable competitor to fixed broadband [3]
A dozen operators launching LTE services in 2010 [4]