Operators around the world are facing tremendous challenges in terms of growth in data traffic, operational efficiency and customer experience. In order to address these demands, further attention and financial investment are being directed to the upgrade of existing network infrastructure-and with peak download speeds of 100Mbps and above being promised, LTE has been widely hailed as the solution to operators’ congestion troubles.

This white paper from AIRCOM International addresses the issues that will be faced by carriers already planning to deploy LTE technology over the next year, as well as any organisation planning to embrace mobile broadband as a principal service offering in the future. The data boom is upon us and anything that can be done to positively impact the future status of the network should be done today.

U.S. Cellular will be the fourth US network to launch LTE, after Metro PCS, Verizon and AT&T

The North American carrier U.S. Cellular has announced that it will launch its LTE network in March, along with accompanying LTE ready devices. The network which will be launched in conjunction with its build partner King Street Wireless, was originally meant to come online by the end of 2011, but no specific reason has been given for the delay.

U.S. Cellular said that the 700MHz network, which it will brand as 4G LTE, will initially cover 25 per cent of its customers and includes cities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma. It will be the first carrier to bring LTE to some of these areas. Details of further expansion were not provided, but in a statement the carrier said there would be a, “next wave of market launches… announced later this month.”

The devices customers will be able to choose from are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE tablet, and the Samsung Galaxy Aviator 4G LTE smartphone, both Google Android powered.

Mary N. Dillon, president and CEO of U.S. Cellular talked up the customer service benefits of the network over rivals in a statement, saying that, “This 4G LTE network builds upon our industry-leading network satisfaction and is the only one that comes with a valuable rewards program and other unique benefits like Overage Protection and Battery Swap that make our customers the happiest in wireless.”

U.S. Cellular is one of the smaller tier operators in the US, with just 1.77 per cent of the market according to Informa WCIS statistics. While its customers are able to use their smartphones outside of their home territories thanks to roaming agreements with the larger carriers, LTE roaming is not possible at present due to device incompatibilities between the bands used by each of the carriers, an issue that is currently being debated by the US regulator, the FCC.

The LTE Middle East and North Africa conference will take place on the 29th-30th April, Westin Mina Seyali, Dubai, UAE. Go to the website to register your interest.

Dr Mohamed Nadder Hamdy, director capacity planning, Etisalat, UAE

Disclaimer: “The following interview expresses Dr Hamdy’s personal opinions based on his own experience and published research work. It does not reflect his company’s official policy or directives.”

Etisalat is the largest mobile operator is the UAE, commanding 60 per cent of its local market. As one of the major operators in the region the recent launch of an LTE service across most of the major cities in the county can be viewed as a major statement of its intent to stay ahead of the competition.

Ahead of his key speaking role at the upcoming LTE Middle East and North Africa conference, to be held in Dubai on the 29th-30th April, we catch up with Dr Mohamed Nadder Hamdy, director of capacity planning for Etisalat.

At what stage is your LTE rollout?

We have commercially launched LTE in September [2011] and started selling the devices a few weeks back. We have covered all the main cities with around 1000 base stations on 2.6GHz.

What are the major challenges that an operator will face when deploying an LTE network?

The first challenge is the selection of the spectrum to be used. Most countries have the 2.6GHz bandwidth available, but it has very bad propagation capabilities. It requires significantly more sites that what we used for 1800 or 900MHz. In order to use any of the GSM band, in particular 1800 you need to refarm from the GSM 2G network, which is not that simple. A significant number of users still have 2G handsets, as they are cheaper and don’t consume the battery [as much] as the more advanced smartphones. So that’s a major issue – the spectrum allocation, and selecting the best spectrum to deploy. For us, we have started with 2.6, as we have no choice. We had to deploy LTE as fast as we could and there was nothing else available. It’s fairly costly, in terms of the number of basestations and we feel that in terms of future expansion we should be going for the 1800 band direction.

How was your spectrum auction process managed?

The spectrum was not auctioned – we just applied. It’s a little different here in the UAE, as there are only two operators here and you pay fixed fees for the band annually. So even for the current 2G and 3G bands we are paying annual fees. It’s not a one-time lump sum that we pay.  And similarly the 2.6 band follows the same scheme. We requested an allocation of 20MHz on that band and we just paid the fees.

Why would you characterise the 2.6Ghz band as “very bad”?

What you care about most at this stage is the coverage everywhere – and the distance you can cover with this band is about one third of what you can cover with the 1800. That forces you to deploy a lot more base stations. The penetration for the indoor environment is also much worse that for the other bands. My experience with this band was not encouraging and we would tell other operators that are going into LTE to apply for lower bands.

Because its propagation distance is smaller, it means that you need to put more cells next to each other to get more capacity, [It’s a challenge] …if you are starting a new network and you want to have greater coverage, but you don’t have the traffic this band definitely doesn’t let you do that without a reasonable number of sites.

Are you planning on refarming your network to enable LTE to operate on 1800?

Our dongles do operate at 1800 but the fact is that most of our 2G subscribers are still using 2G handsets. We don’t see that they are going to change it in the near future. We still have a lot of traffic on the 2G bands so it will not be easy to refarm it straight away. To obtain full throughput from LTE you need around 20MHz of bandwidth, so we are taking it in steps for 1800. We might start with 5 or 10MHz and as the traffic on 2G reduces we will evacuate more and so on. I would say this would take approximately two years.

How common are the spectrum issues you are facing are to the rest of the Middle-East?

It is common and it is causing a great deal of ambiguity. It’s a compromise – if you want to start now then you have to use a worse band than if you wait a few years more. For example, the digital dividend that most countries are evacuating by giving up the analogue broadcasts. Even if we are promised that it will be evacuated, we don’t know if it will be in one or two years. So you are under this pressure to wait or you can deploy now with the higher cost of base stations. It’s a dilemma.

What other crucial issues do carriers need to take into account?

Another problem that everybody is facing is the availability of devices. Currently in our market we don’t have handsets at all; they’re all data dongles. The issue is that devices are not all capable of handing over to the previous 2G and 3G networks. This aspect needs a lot of improvement as it’s not very smooth so far. In the US they have some phones but they are CDMA with LTE- they don’t have phones that work on UMTS with LTE.  Of course the lack of voice is one of the major challenges so far. It is not available in the initial deployment. We are not offering voice services and this is one of the things that will limit the strength of LTE in the initial stages.

What benefits will VoLTE bring to carriers and consumers?

VoLTE will be of benefit as it will enable the use of smartphones, one of our major revenue streams – because it’s convenient for everyone to have the internet in their pocket. Without voice, no one will be carry an LTE smartphone so it’s extremely important for us.

The scheme we are adopting for VoLTE is the IMS solution, and that is not yet ready. It will take some time. The terminals also need to be IMS ready. A possible solution will be circuit-switched fall back, where the terminal will revert to 3G to make a voice call – but we don’t want to go that route; we want to go directly to the IMS part, which is recommended by the 3GPP and all the industry.

What’s wrong with the circuit-switched fall-back route? After all, it has worked in the US?

Circuit switched fall-back has a lot of call set-up delay. Imagine if your mobile needs to change to 2G or 3G before making or receiving voice calls – it takes maybe 15 seconds or more to search for a cell and switch to it. We are worried it will affect our customer perception.

So the disadvantages are primarily to the end user?

Yes. LTE is characterized by very high spectral efficiency and, much higher capacity so if you are carrying the voice over the LTE then you are relieving the 3G network from voice traffic and it will be faster to refarm the 2G and even dismantle its equipment. While we rely on the 2G and 3G networks to carry the voice we are losing capacity there. It will make it difficult to redeploy into LTE. By the end of 2012 we will have voice enabled handsets and the network will be ready?

Do you think LTE will be easier to monetize than 3G?

We were one of the first to adopt 3G technology in 2002/3 and we didn’t see any traffic pick-up until 2006-7. The reason is that there is no ‘killer-app’. I expect the LTE will be the same. There was no clear application for the 3G – even until today – the only thing that came up was that customers started to get smartphones and YouTube and other websites that require heavy throughput came up and that’s why started people started moving to 3G. The trend is now for smartphones and tablets, but before these devices came we didn’t have a real need. So it’s a matter of applications, a matter of the user need. In a few years we will have HD on YouTube so LTE will pick up. There is no killer app, but it might come.

With that in mind, why did Etisalat need to move to now?

The reason we went to LTE is to be prepared and get the know-how – before the traffic comes. To learn how to implement it, to operate it, before we get the heavy traffic. The data traffic is doubling every year and the major contributor is video which is now 50-60 per cent is video. I don’t forecast huge traffic device from customers as the devices are still expensive, but it’s a good opportunity to learn, to optimise and prepare for when the heavy traffic comes. We are charging almost the same as for 2G and 3G, but the dongle is still expensive so not everyone is not willing to go for that yet. It will come down through economies of scale, and soon the packages will be attractive.

What are you hoping to get out of the LTE MENA conference?

It will be very useful to get to know what the other operators are doing, the lessons learned and how they overcome it. That is the benefit of these sessions – so that others will not have to repeat the mistakes that others have committed.

Dr Mohamed Nadder Hamdy, Director Capacity Planner, Etisalat, UAE will taking part in the LTE Executive Think-Tank on Day One of the LTE Conference, taking place on the 29th-30th April, Westin Mina Seyali, Dubai, UAE. Go to the website to register your interest.

GPS issues mean that LightSquared's satellite and ground-station based network may never get of the ground

LightSquared, the aspiring US LTE carrier, has received a hammer blow to its hopes of shaking up the US market with a wholesale LTE network from a damning report released last week by the executive committee for Space-based Positioning Navigation & Timing (PNT).

The report, sent to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) stated that according to the latest round of tests, “there appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS.”

This is despite repeated protests from LightSquared that there are several measures that can be taken to mitigate or remove the interference between its licensed ‘L band’ 1600MHz spectrum and that of the GPS devices, such as reducing its transmission power and the creation of LightSquared compatible receivers by Javad GNSS.

LightSquared has placed the blame for the interference squarely on the shoulders of the GPS industry, stating that it is GPS devices that are leaking into LightSquared’s frequencies due to poor filter design. However, LightSquared’s arguments have not swayed the PNT and the report said that, “as a result, no additional testing is warranted at this time.”

The report would suggest that it is unlikely that the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would approve the launch of the LightSquared network.

LightSquared has responded strongly to the report, claiming that the PNT tests were ‘rigged’, due to the tests being conducted on obsolete devices, using power level 32-times that at which LightSquared would be operating its network, and with an unrealistic margin for failure of 1dB. It also claimed that members of the PNT advisory board, “have professional connections to companies that are members of the Coalition to Save Our GPS.” LightSquared said it would seek an explanation for the apparent conflict of interest.

Despite the highly published and ongoing GPS related issues, LightSquared has continued to make deals for its wholesale network, signing up a 37^th customer, Hometown Telecom just yesterday. However, its major network partner Sprint, said that its construction plans were on hold while the GPS issues remained unresolved and said that extended delays could cause it to call off the deal completely, which could threaten the viability of LightSquared’s plans.

LTE networks need big pipes for backhaul as well

LTE mobile broadband has already been rolled out in some markets and is on the verge of deployment in many more, but as data consumption grows, a challenge that will face operators is how to backhaul their LTE networks. Without enough backhaul capacity for their networks, network customers will not feel they are getting the level of service they have paid for, which is one of the prime causes for customer churn.

Today, 3G mobile broadband is commonly deployed in developed markets and provides sufficient bandwidth for basic browsing and small downloads. However, consumers often complain that more data intensive tasks, such as video streaming, are often erratic and inconsistent using 3G. LTE is being pitched as a solution to this problem but without the necessary infrastructure in place to provide sufficient backhaul capacity, operators will continue to leave customers underwhelmed.

“If operators are planning to offer 100Mbps to customers by LTE, the backhaul required would be 150Mbps or even more – and it would be over-provisioned,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media. “Most of the deployments so far have been fibre-based, for example, Verizon’s LTE is capitalising on its fibre network, and that’s the reason why it’s so aggressive and are able to roll out LTE so quickly and in so many markets.”

But in order to provide the necessary coverage as data usage grows, operators have increasingly begun to rely on the use of small cells for their 3G networks. With small cells, operators can use many cells distributed across a geographical area to provide better coverage and satisfy customer demands.

LTE networks will need to provide speeds of up to 144Mbps to each cell. However, to deliver fibre to each small cell is not an practical option, due to the cost of leasing fibre, coupled with the work required to dig trenches to each individual small cell.

Therefore, vendors are providing fibre up to basestation towers, and then the rest of the signal is distributed by radiowave technology to the small cells. Operators can plan the contention ratio required and provide a reasonable amount of bandwidth into those radiowaves. There are various technologies on the market that aim to address this issue, and Mavrakis believes point-to-multipoint millimetre wave technology offers a compelling solution.

“Millimetre wave technology is very interesting simply because there’s so much bandwidth available so these backhaul solutions are capable of providing multi-gigabit capacity,” he said.

Bluwan is one vendor providing point to multipoint technology, and Shayan Sanyal, the firm’s CMO, believes that operators need to begin thinking about LTE small cell backhaul, as if they do not take necessary steps, their 4G networks will not deliver on the capabilities that LTE can provide.

“The reason the small cell approach is popular is because you can provide more bandwidth to fewer people,” he said. “But not a lot of thought has been given by the industry on how to backhaul small cell for LTE, so manufacturers of small cells are scrambling to figure out how to provide capacity – because the customers are saying, great technology, but how can you make it work?”

He argued that other technologies do have their use cases, but are not suitable for providing bandwidth to small cells on LTE networks. For example, point-to-point microwave requires each macro cell to have a large number of dishes installed across an area, however the installation and rental costs needed to for those dishes are very high.

“Then you have point-to-multi-point microwave, which requires almost half as many dishes, but do not provide enough capacity. Using that technology, operators can provide capacity of up to 100Mbps in total, but LTE small cells need 144Mbps delivered to each cell.”

Point to multi-point millimetre wave provides capacity of 2Gbps and can deliver 150Mbps-200Mbps to 10 sites and, according to Mavrakis, is a cheaper option too.

“It is cheaper not because of the technology itself, but because of the topology. You can put sector antennae at the distribution point, then you can connect several cells instead of having two antennae for each link,” he said.

However, he added that operators are not yet using small cells for their LTE networks, but that will be the next step of deployment and operators are likely to begin using them in one or two years.

“There’s a lot of activity from vendors on this, meaning that there’s a lot of demand from operators. Point to multipoint millimetre wave will be something to look out for,” he said.

The SC9610, Spreadtrum's first TD-LTE enabled design, is aimed at the Chinese market

Spreadtrum, a Chinese fabless semiconductor designer has unveiled its first LTE enabled design. The SC9610 is a baseband modem based on TD-LTE, set to become the predominant LTE technology in China.

The SC9610 is CMOS silicon based and manufactured on a 40nm process and demonstrates the evolution of LTE chipset design by combining multiband TD-LTE along with TD-SCDMA 3G, and EDGE/GPRS and GSM.

The chip supports multiple bands, and can hit speeds on the downlink of 100Mbps and uplink speeds of 50Mbps and supports 5, 10, 15 and 20MHz channels and 2×2 MIMO.  It is not FDD-LTE compatible however, and a spokeperson told Telecoms.com that a solution for that would be arriving later in the year.

The chip company said that the SC9610 is now sampling with potential customers but would not reveal who they were. However, in a canned quote, Spreadtrum’s president and CEO Dr Leo Li pointed out that China Mobile, is beginning “more extensive” trials of TD-LTE. It could be a hint.

China Mobile is the country’s largest domestic operator with 640 million total subscribers and an expected 50 million 3G subscribers as of the end of 2011, and is currently awaiting for the Chinese government to grant it commercial licences for LTE spectrum.

“The depth of experience we bring in TD-SCDMA products, combined with our early leadership in China’s 4G network evolution, positions Spreadtrum as a long-term leading provider of multimode baseband solutions,” Dr Leo Li said.

It is unknown what devies the SC9610 might turn up in but it is unlikely to be ‘the one’ for the next iPhone in the region as Apple only just achieving a single world phone with the iPhone 4S and is unlikely to want to change tack by going for the China only SC9610.

The next LTE conference is LTE Latin America 2012, taking place on the 17-18 April 2012,at the Windsor Barra Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Bouygues, SFR and Orange all won spectrum in the 800MHz auction

French regulator Arcep has said that it has awarded 4G licences in the 800Mhz band to the incumbent operators Bouygues, Orange and SFR. Fourth applicant Free Mobile, owned by Iliad, was not successful. All four operators were previously awarded 4G licences at 2.6GHz.

This latest auction raised €2.64bn for the French state. Bouygues paid €683bn for block A while Orange paid €891m for block D. SFR picked up blocks B and C for €1.07bn, but will be required to offer access to Free Mobile once Free’s 2.6GHz network reaches 25 per cent population coverage.

Meanwhile Dutch incumbent KPN has sold its French MVNO Simyo to Bouygues for an undisclosed sum. Simyo provides service to 180,000 customers and the two firms said that service would not be affected. The deal is expected to close before 2012.

After prolonged trials Etisalat has commercially launched LTE services in the UAE

Etisalat, the largest carrier in the UAE, has launched a commercial LTE network in the country. The service will offer customers mobile LTE-based broadband using E398-LTE USB modems, which it said were available immediately from Etisalat Business Centres and other outlets.

The USB dongles can be picked up free on contracts by signing up to Etisalat’s MyDataPlan ‘Ultra’ pack on a six-month or 12-month contract with a 20GB data allowance. The dongles can also be purchased contract free for AED799 ($218).

Matthew Willsher, chief marketing officer for Etisalat said in a statement that, “We are very excited about introducing the first real 4G (LTE) experience to our customers in the UAE. The launch of the service and USB modems follows user trials that showed exceptionally satisfying performance. In coming months, our customers can expect a range of LTE compatible data-centric wireless routers and tablets, and 4G enabled phones, as and when they are available in the market.”

Etisalat has deployed 1000 base stations in the UAE and cover 70 per cent of the population and Willsher said that it is aiming to cover the population of the whole country. The network used FDD spectrum and outside of LTE coverage Etisalat said devices would automatically fall back to its HSPA+ service to maintain a high quality of service.

Back in October Etisalat took the technology initiative in the country by introducing Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to Blackberry Bold 9900 devices, enabling purchases us to $50 to be made with the phone at MasterCard purchase points.

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel. Its WiMAX network covers the city of Baku, Azerbaijan

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel, was a man with a vision. As an Azerbaijani citizen living in the USA he saw an opportunity to dramatically improve the ageing and archaic soviet telecoms infrastructure of the former Soviet state.

Over the past five years, Azerbaijan has put an emphasis on developing its ICT sector and as a result the country now has three mobile carriers along with several ISPs offering ADSL based fixed-line internet connectivity. But while the broadband market was growing by 30-40 per cent each year only one of the local carriers was offering 3G services and Mollazade and his partners saw that there was a real opportunity to offer high speed wireless data services.

At that time though, while LTE had a large amount of buzz and expectation about it, as far as building a real-world commercial network, the only real game in town was WiMAX as Mollazade told Telecoms.com. “In 2009 there were discussions about LTE at the Mobile World Congress, but WiMAX was more established with certified products and affordable prices – LTE was more like something which may come. [When it did] the equipment, modems, end-user device – all of them were exorbitantly expensive, so we decided to go with WiMAX and to gain a customer base of subscribers.”

Initially, Azqtel’s licence only covered downtown Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, but in 2010 the service raised funds and was relaunched under the brand name Sazz, as a service that now covers the metropolitan areas of the capital Baku, and the nearby town of Sumquayit, covering a total of around four million people.

The service currently offers speeds of 10Mb/sec, which is on par with the real world speeds seen in most LTE networks running round the world. The price of 25 New Manat, around US$32, is affordable. Mollazade told Telecoms.com that the service has picked up thousands of customers in the past year, and is already cash-flow positive.

However, on a global scale it’s clear that while the winds of technology are driving the LTE ship forward at a pace, WiMAX is virtually dead in the water. What then are Azqtel’s contingency plans for the future?

“We are looking in the next couple of years to be in line with the wireless capabilities of broadband”, admits Mollazade. “But we haven’t made any specific decisions”, he adds. “Technology always changes. Maybe five years from now there might be something different.”

Mollazade tacitly admits though that a transition to LTE is very much on the agenda, though exactly what it does choose to do is tied to what happens in terms of spectrum. As a WiMAX operator, Azqtel has a generous 60MHz of 3.5GHz, and though that’s frequency that isn’t widely deployed for LTE it’s an option it would take up if it could. “WiMAX operators round the world are at 3.5GHz and all of them, including us, are really strongly urging vendors to come up with a migration for LTE based on 3.5GHz. However, if we decide to go to LTE we would ultimately require LTE licenses if 3.5GHz is not going to work for us.”

“It’s all going to depend on a number of factors. Whether LTE will be available on 3.5GHz or not, whether we can acquire 2.6GHz or 2.3GHz or 700MHz frequencies. Or whether we need to skip all of this, and wait for LTE Advanced. We are weighing all options. But at the moment the customers in Baku are happy with what we are offering.”

In particular they are happy with the fully unlimited service that they currently enjoy. Is that a situation that Mollazade thinks is sustainable going forward? “It’s a true unlimited. In our legal contracts we warn that we may restrict user torrents, but quite frankly at this early stage, we don’t have any policies. As an operator we will be looking into given priority to VoIP over browsing and over YouTube, so at the moment we are looking at different technologies that will give us a DPI solution. However, at the moment with WiMAX we think we can keep unlimited. That gives us an advantage. The other carrier’s unlimited [services] are twice as expensive.”

In the meantime though, the focus is on expansion with the aim to move beyond its current city limits. “We are planning to expand nationwide. We have secured some contracts on education, in health and sports. We are planning in 2013 to go beyond the capital. Azerbaijan has a developing economy, but there is a need for broadband in the second, third and fourth cities. And we have a plan to deliver triple-play across the nation.”

Mollazade is quick to highlight the advantage its service has over the rival fixed-line ADSL services. “ADSL customers have to wait for a couple of weeks for it to come to them. And they normally get half [the performance] that they pay for – and we add a nomadic experience. So for a quality, speed and price perspective I think we are more competitive.”

The big challenges over the next 12 months Mollazade says will be keeping a close watch on capacity, particularly as its customer base grows in order to maintain the three pillars the company is based on, good service, affordability and good customer support.

Mollazade is enthused about the possibilities that Broadband Middle East and conference, taking place in Dubai in March will provide, such as the chance to learn first-hand about how others in a similar position have dealt with change. “We are also curious to know about the experience of others, so we are looking at Sprint and Clearwire and P1 and Yes in Malaysia.

He also is enthusiastic about selling the benefits of the Azerbaijan market, which with its oil and gas economy presents an economy with great investment potential. “The market has not reached yet its potential in terms of its subscribers. It’s still in play, and I would urge investors and technology groups and applications service providers to look at this market with more attention. It’s has huge infrastructure development based on oil and gas cash. There are opportunities here.”

Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel is speaking on Day One of the Broadband MEA conference, taking place on the 25-27th March 2012, at the Westin Mina Seyahi Beach Resort and Marina, Dubai, UAE. Go to the website now to register your interest.

Verizon's LTE network has suffered its third outage in 2011

US carrier Verizon Wireless restored LTE service across the country yesterday after suffering an outage, the third it has experienced this year. On Wednesday this week, its LTE customers found that they were unable to connect to the high-speed network, with devices falling back to 3G speeds or slower.

Yesterday the carrier released a statement that read, “Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE service returned to normal Wednesday evening after the company’s network operations team resolved a technical issue.  Some 4G customers had reported intermittent or unavailable 4G service, or devices operating on 3G, for periods of time starting late Tuesday. Throughout this time, all customers were able to make voice calls, send and receive text messages, and 3G data devices operated normally.”

Verizon launched LTE in December 2010 across 30 cities, but suffered a first outage In April this year lasting 24-hours, with a second one hit in October. This third one could cause issues for the company which bills itself in the US as, “America’s fasters, most reliable 4G network.”

In the April outage it was confirmed by Verizon that an IMS software bug caused the issue. However, there was no mention of exactly has caused the problem this time around, with GigaOm in the US suggesting that it could have been problem with the radio network.

Verizon is due to expand to 190 markets in the US, making it by far the largest LTE deployment in the world. Regional carrier Metro PCS offers an LTE service, while Verizon major rival AT&T launches its LTE service in September this year.

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The next LTE conference is LTE Latin America 2012, taking place on the 17-18 April 2012,at the Windsor Barra Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Go to the website to register your interest.