One of my favorite sites is the 3G and 4G Wireless Blog, which always finds interesting white papers on 4G technology. The LTE Spectrum Strategies and Forecasts to 2016 from market researcher Informa is one example. Informa’s PowerPoint deck contains more than a dozen snapshots on the current status of LTE, world-wide.
The U.S. 700 MHz auction in 2008 was for five blocks, with all blocks except D Block being divided into various geographical splits of the national footprint:
- A Block – 176 “economic area” licences for 2 × 6MHz
- B Block – 734 “cellular market area” licences for 2 × 6MHz
- C Block – 12 “regional economic area grouping” licences for 2 × 11MHz, with “open platform” conditions
- D Block – single national licence for 2 × 5MHz, with conditions requiring a public/private partnership to create a public safety broadband network
- E Block – 176 economic area licences for 6MHz (unpaired).
The FCC wanted to harmonize its “new” AWS spectrum (1.7/2.1 GHz) with Europe’s UMTS 2100 band.
Unfortunately, the lower half of Europe’s UMTS 2100 band overlaps with the U.S. PCS band, so world harmonization isn’t possible in our AWS, PCS or 850MHz bands.
The only true “world band” for LTE is 2.6 GHz.
That’s why Sprint and Clearwire seem to be well positioned. They have spectrum for either paired (FDD) or unpaired (TDD) use, and commodity devices should be available, world-wide.
Verizon says its LTE network now covers more than 160 million Americans – about half the U.S. population. It plans to bring coverage to more than 185 million Americans by the end of 2011. Clearwire currently covers about 130 million Americans with about 4.4 million subs. Verizon began LTE service about 8 months ago while Clearwire began service in Baltimore in October, 2008.
The WiMAX Forum says there are now 20 million WiMAX subscriber globally.
LTE subs are expected to reach 300 million by 2015, compared with 500,000 this year, according to a report from Juniper Research.
Gartner forecasts Android will own half the worldwide smartphone market by 2015, while Microsoft will be second at nearly 20 percent, and Apple third with about 17 percent. Android-based LTE phones and tablets on 2 dot 6 will be universal communicators.
The singularity is near. Hold onto your hat.
