4G/LTE networks passes 500 milestone says GSA

2 Jun 2016
Joe Barrett

GSA, the (Global mobile Suppliers Association) confirms that the number of commercially launched LTE networks has passed the 500 milestone, which was achieved during May 2016.
According to its latest research, 503 operators have commercially launched LTE networks in 167 countries.

LTE is the fastest developing mobile communications system technology ever. The historic milestone of 500 commercially launched LTE networks was reached in 77 months from first service launch, almost 5 years less than the time taken by 3G/WCDMA systems, and 6 months faster than HSPA systems.

GSA forecasts there will be at least 550 commercially launched LTE networks by end 2016.

Around 25% of LTE operators have launched LTE-Advanced systems.

Alan Hadden, VP of Research, GSA said: “Several LTE operators are now introducing LTE-Advanced Pro technologies, sometimes referred to as 4.5G, which is established as a major industry trend in 2016. LTE-Advanced Pro systems can support peak downlink speeds up to 1 Gbps and beyond.”

The number of LTE and LTE-Advanced subscriptions reached 1.068 billion worldwide by end 2015. LTE continues to grow faster than any other mobile communications system technology and is already responsible for 1 in 7 mobile subscriptions worldwide. Data for Q1 2016 LTE subscriptions will be published by GSA in the next few days.

Full details of all LTE, LTE-Advanced and LTE-Advanced Pro network deployments, commercial launches, spectrum usage, the user devices ecosystem, subscriptions, and more will be included in the next update of the Evolution to LTE report to be published by GSA during this month.

Further information about LTE, LTE-Advanced and LTE-Advanced Pro mobile broadband systems including graphics, presentations, and white papers is available on the GSA website www.gsacom.com

ABOUT GSA

GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) represents GSM/EDGE/WCDMA-HSPA/HSPA+, LTE/LTE-Advanced and future 5G suppliers. GSA brings together a global industry community of telecoms professionals through its website, reports, information papers and practical activities to inform, influence, educate, explain and promote the opportunities enabled by mobile broadband systems. The GSA website www.gsacom.com has over 70,500 registered users for knowledge gathering and information sharing of key facts, trends and analysis, and over 26,000 connections on our social network platforms LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Over 1 million GSA reports, presentations, information papers, maps, charts and other resources were downloaded from www.gsacom.com in under five years.

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