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Study: LTE equipment market to grow 81 percent to 2016Add to July 29, 2011 
According to a new report made recently by the market research firm Dell'Oro Group, the global LTE equipment market is expected to grow at a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of about 81 percent from now until 2016. Advertisement In fact, the market for LTE (long term evolution) equipment could reach up to $8 billion by 2015, and Dell'Oro expects picocell revenues to be about 8.8 to 9 percent of the total LTE eNode B revenues during that time frame. Small cells, including picocells, are rapidly gaining favor as operators are more interested in heterogeneous networks that allow them to offload data from the macrocellular network in congested areas and increase capacity to accommodate increased demands on the network from data traffic.  And while LTE technology may be the fastest-growing segment, Dell'Oro said W-CDMA revenues will also drive the wireless industry during the forecast period and will represent more than 70 percent of all revenues in 2015. The overall mobile infrastructure market should grow at a 4 percent CAGR between 2011 and 2016. “Based on recent conversations with leading wireless carriers and operators, we have slightly raised our picocell forecast,” said Stefan Pongratz, an analyst at Dell'Oro Group. “In the past year, we have noticed that mobile service operators have shifted away from thinking and talking about small cells, to conducting actual trials on picocells." Pongratz added "More wireless carriers and operators are now focused on investigating and trialing best solutions and approaches to complement their macro networks so they could increase capacity and performance in high-utilization regions." He added "While we believe the macro LTE network will carry the majority of the traffic through 2016, we believe LTE equipment makers and vendors will start recognizing significant pico eNode B revenues in the outer years of the forecast period.” Compared to other wireless industry technology, LTE is more efficient, faster and uses mobile spectrum more intelligently. 4G (fourth generation) mobile wireless standards' goal is to provide high-speed mobile phone transmissions, which can support high-quality streaming video and other critical services. 4G technology include mobile Wi-Max and LTE (long term evolution). Remember that 4G technology isn't backward-compatible with 3G however, but it uses wireless spectrum more efficiently than 3G does. Today smartphones are used for Internet access and data transmission, and their use is growing rapidly. This has created a demand for reliable wireless data networks with wide coverage from wireless carriers. Today, advanced antenna technologies are the major backbone for WiMax and LTE technology for the proper reception and transmission performance of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and smartphones of all types. Each one uses different segments of the wireless spectrum for their normal operation. It's important to note that neither will operate at current frequencies, and neither natively supports voice transmission. This creates a necessity for the smartphone to utilize a 3G chip to properly handle voice calls and that will enable roaming between mobile carriers into different geographic areas.  Currently, Sprint is the only wireless carrier offering 4G service in the U.S. Sprint uses WiMax technology on the Android-based HTC EVO 4G and Samsung Epic 4G phones. Verizon wireless has said that it expects to ship LTE phones by mid-2011. On a modern 4G network today, wireless carriers can supply up to ten times the normal throughput of 3G technology. This can provide faster downloads and streaming of video. On Oct. 7, Verizon Wireless announced more plans for this year's launch of its faster 4G Internet service for smartphones and mobile devices across the United States. Since the beginning of 2010, the wireless carrier has been redesigning its wireless network infrastructure to cover no less than 38 cities in the U.S. with its 4G data network, and Verizon has repeatedly said from the very beginning that it will be completed before the end of the year. Major cities will include New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and Atlanta. Verizon's 4G mobile network can transmit data up to ten times faster than the older and somewhat slower 3G signal that most new smartphones are equipped with today. It will also send that data with half the delay of 3G, making it perform a lot better, especially for business applications. For the past year, wireless carriers have been scrambling to build speedier networks as more mobile subscribers buy data-hungry smartphones that can download complex mobile apps, exchange photos and stream music and video across the Internet. Verizon's new 4G network (also called Long-Term Evolution or LTE for short) can reach speeds faster than Sprint's 4G and T-Mobile's HSPA+ networks, both of which are currently available in a few dozen cities. AT&T maintains that its 4G service will launch only sometime in 2011. Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless' newly appointed chief operating officer said yesterday at the CTIA mobile industry event in San Francisco "We have been waiting for years to say that things like M2M machine-to-machine, things like motion video, could be carried over a wireless network. We're very excited to be on the leading edge of this with the largest launch of a 4G network." Once the infrastructure is in place, MID (mobile Internet device) manufacturers and smartphone makers will have to build products to take advantage of this much faster network speed. The smartphones available today simply don't have the 4G chip needed to tap into the faster network or the battery capacity to properly handle its processing requirements. Not even the iPhone.  A common complaint among many Verizon smartphone users is that its 3G phones can't hold calls and transmit data simultaneously, and AT&T and Apple have capitalized on that shortcoming in their radio, TV and print commercials over the past two to three months. When 4G phones finally hit the market, users in range of a newly equipped tower will be able to access 4G data while making calls on the existing network because the first batch of MIDs will include both 3G and 4G chips. Verizon's rollout has been a long time coming and not without its share of issues. For example, interference with Canada's wireless signals is creating some problems for Verizon's Detroit network, but McAdam said he expects that to be fixed in the near future, without giving any timeframe. Verizon Wireless is also equipping 62 busy airports in the U.S. with 4G coverage, including some in cities that won't even be part of the initial rollout. Additionally, Verizon will soon begin selling a laptop accessory that can be plugged into a USB port to access the 4G network, in a manner very similar to what AT&T announced just yesterday. Large smartphone, MID and tablet makers are now working together on new devices equipped with 4G technology, which should start showing up in stores during the first half of 2011, McAdam said. About five or six of those will be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Some wireless industry observers are also expecting a few more device makers will scramble to showcase their new 4G phones as well at CES, so there could be maybe ten or more to look at. Now Verizon Wireless isn't a regular attendee of the CES that is held annually in Las Vegas every January. But next year, the company will have a two-story booth displaying not only its products but also some from its partners. Even Google's CEO Eric Schmidt will join Verizon for an announcement at the show. It's also expected he will mention Android's many benefits and why it has become the most popular operating system in the mobile industry and in such little time. More on LTE technology and why it's so popular Just about everywhere you look today, wireless carriers are seeing big dollar signs in their coffers as they expect revenue to substantially increase from their data subscribers when they convert their mobile networks to 4G LTE technology. In the modern communications world of today, 4G (fourth generation) mobile wireless standards' goal is to provide high-speed mobile phone transmissions, which can support high-quality streaming video and other critical services. 4G technology include mobile Wi-Max and LTE (long term evolution). Remember that 4G technology isn't backward-compatible with 3G however, but it uses wireless spectrum more efficiently than 3G does. Advertisement Today smartphones are used for Internet access and data transmission, and their use is growing rapidly. This has created a demand for reliable wireless data networks with wide coverage from wireless carriers. However, an executive of a mobile data services provider warned wireless carriers yesterday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto that they will have to do a lot more than just open up their bank accounts. They will have to do some extensive traffic management, since 4G (4th generation) LTE technology is different from 3G and there are many things they need to carefully assess before taking the plunge. Steven van Zanen, vice-president of British-based Acision said “We have no idea who’s going to use what capacity on what device and at what location.” He said that during a discussion on the upcoming of LTE at the conference. 
In fact he added "We don't even have a clue at what mobile devices will even look like in five years from now." Without knowing for sure what’s going on inside their own networks, wireless service providers can’t even begin to accurately manage them and charge subscribers accordingly, added Zanen. And while LTE technology has advantages of raising data download speeds and being able to use networks more efficiently, for van Zanen it has one major disadvantage: It runs on IP (the Internet Protocol). Like all IP networks, it isn’t content aware, he explained. So no matter how much wireless spectrum a carrier buys to meet what van Zanen admits will be huge demand, it won’t help at all. Zanen cited a study by Britain’s Barclay Capital Equity Research that says European mobile and wireless operators used to make 10,000 euros per gigabyte of spectrum voice calls, 30,000 euros for text messages, and a mere five euros for data. “And that's just where the problem lies. We can make the bandwidth available, we can make it larger, we can make it faster, but the business model still doesn’t stack up, at least for now,” he said. This is going to matter a lot in the future when most of the time low-latency apps like video will consume the bulk of a carrier’s bandwidth, he said. So the service provider has to understand when it needs more bandwidth, and what's the best way to do it. Wireless networks today also have to be subscriber and resource-aware, he added, in order that they can perform what he called “sustainable net neutrality” or the ability of a mobile carrier to juggle data for the time of day or the mobile applications subscribers use individually. “Certain traffic just needs to drive outside peak hours,” he added. When all of that is said and done, wireless carriers will compete for subscribers where it counts, on the quality of their service, he said. “If you don't know what the content is, how the heck are you actually going to treat it differently?” asked Zanen. For example, some mobile subscribers might pay more to be assured of better QoS (quality of service) for voice calls or Facebook access, or a bundle of services. Traffic management is a very controversial issue today, and with the advent of LTE, it's only getting worse and more complicated. Wireless carriers today insist that it is necessary to meet the soaring demand for capacity, but opponents (especially in the U.S.) say it violates the principle of Internet neutrality-- the right to have all traffic on the Internet flow unimpeded. Add to Source: The Dell'Oro Group. Advertise with us
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