LTE still on track to impress us in 2010

Interesting to see how well the LTE segment is holding up under the pressure of a global recession.  I blogged a few months back about the rollout plans for LTE, and how a lot of the major operators are committing to major rollouts in the second half of 2010.  However, at this stage I was expecting to hear a few of them slipping their plans back by 6 months or so.  But that doesn’t seem to be happening.  A recent Infonetics report states that fourteen operators have committed to LTE rollouts next year, up from 10 in March. It also predicts “the LTE network equipment market will be worth more than $5 billion by 2013.

However, I find it interesting that it is only predicting that there will be 72 million users by 2013.  In a world of 4.6 billion phone users this is a drop in the ocean and probably gives a good indication that the market is going to be very, very selective for a number of years. It also highlights that the fear or ambition that LTE will be a fixed broadband killer is a little premature.  In a recent ITU report it highlights that there are around 450m fixed broadband  subscribers, so replacing these with LTE / Wimax is going to take some time.

Notwithstanding my slight disappointment about the speed of growth being predicted I’m still impresed that it is going ahead so rapidly.