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Jan. 12, 2009

In 2009, wireless carriers and mobile service operators who plan to use LTE technology may be able to avert some of today's negative impact caused by the current global recession, at least to a certain degree, according to a recent report by ABI Research.

In December, Verizon Wireless had said it will begin its LTE rollout by the end of 2009, while Japan’s NTT DoCoMo is likely to follow a similar timeframe, ABI noted.

Overall, this could assist wireless infrastructure companies in an otherwise down period and could encourage other mobile service carriers to follow suite, ABI noted.

“ABI is forecasting that in less than four years, wireless operators will spend a bit less than nine billion dollars on LTE base station infrastructure alone.

For mobile operators that have already deployed 3G networks, LTE will be a key capital expenditure element up until about 2014 ABI suggests in its research brief.

ABI expects AT&T to wait until 2011 or 2012 for its LTE technology deployment, simply because its HSPA network is already substantially faster when compared to other 3G implementations.

For its part, AT&T will certainly want to maximize that investment ABI added.

On the infrastructure side of the equation is of course Nortel, given its extremely fragile and precarious financial health.

Rather than diversify into today's existing cut-throat wireless service provider market and risk additional financial risk, Nortel should instead strongly reinforce its enterprise business as fast as it possibly can, and only then re-evaluate the service provider market, but not before 2015 at the earliest.

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Source: ABI Research.