AsPac off to strong start in LTE deployment

MANILA, Philippines - Asia Pacific is off to a strong start in the adaption of long-term evolution (LTE), with seven LTE networks now commercially launched in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Australia.

This is as Swedish telco giant Ericsson presented insights on the benefits of expanding the adoption of mobile broadband across the Asia Pacific region using LTE telecommunications technology.

Given that most countries in the region already enjoy mobile penetration close to or in excess of 100 percent, mobile broadband is set to be the primary medium through which Asia’s population will access the Internet, according to Arun Bansal, president for Ericsson’s Southeast Asia and Oceania region.

While developed economies are leading the region’s LTE deployments, the critical mass will soon come from the developing markets of China and India, where both TD-LTE and FDD-LTE will thrive. More than 200 million LTE subscriptions will come from Asia Pacific in 2016, and the region will be the largest in terms of LTE subscriptions.

 “A key advantage of LTE is that it offers the capacity and the speed to handle a rapid increase in data traffic. In Asia, the use of smartphones, tablets, and other devices continue to increase, and this will only continue until 2016, when we expect that there will be close to five billion mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide,” Bansal explained.

Ericsson said LTE will be essential in meeting customer demand for data-rich and latency-sensitive applications. “LTE will be a main driver for innovation in the years to come, and will open up possibilities in a number of new areas for telecommunications operators to engage in, such as utilities, transport, health, and broadcasting. At the same time, improvements in healthcare, education and in the delivery of business productivity applications, along with the expansion of broadband connectivity, can underpin economic growth and stimulate social innovations in both urban and rural areas,” Bansal noted.

 “With mobile broadband already the most widespread connectivity solution in low-income countries and a high proportion of Asia Pacific’s population residing in rural areas, LTE is particularly suited as a rural access technology because of its cost effectiveness, convenience and growing functionality.”

Ericsson is the preferred LTE vendor of six out of the seven top ranked operators by global revenue, and currently holds 25 percent of all essential patents in LTE. It also supplies commercial LTE networks used by 130 million of the total 200 million subscribers within commercial LTE service coverage areas.