The Road to 4G: LTE and WiMAX Lead the Way Worldwide

A new research report is available from In-Stat. The following is the abstract:

4G technologies are formally those that will meet the ITU's IMT-Advanced requirements. The two technologies that are expected to meet these requirements include LTE Advanced and 802.16m WiMAX. 4G technologies are extensions of what we are just beginning to see today in mobile WiMAX and in LTE.

With 802.16e WiMAX deployments already launched worldwide, LTE proponents have jumped up their efforts to speed up development, so they are not left behind. Overall, In-Stat expects that mobile WiMAX will ultimately outpace LTE over the forecast period, due to timing of network roll-outs. Mobile WiMAX effectively came on the scene in 2006 with South Korea's WiBro. Comparatively, the earliest commercial LTE deployment will be 2009. Japan's NTT DoCoMo is expected to begin its commercial services in the late 2009/2010 timeframe.

In-Stat expects that mobile WiMAX and LTE subscriptions will represent only a miniscule portion of the total 2G/3G/4G subscriptions over the next five years. Even in 2013, In-Stat expects that GSM/GPRS/EDGE will account for nearly 2.8 billion subscriptions, representing more than 55 percent of the total 4.8 billion 2G/3G/4G subscriptions expected in 2013.