Well the answer to this question is of course “Yes”. But before I get into them I think it ought to be said that, unlike some other technologies, these issues are very much hurdles rather than roadblocks. True, some of them are higher hurdles than others, but they’re by no means insurmountable and with the industry momentum right now they will be sorted.
So, in no particular order, some of the issues are:
- Spectrum availability – when and how much?
- Devices – aspects like device types, convergence and availability
- Carrier capex plans – mobile operators face decisions about the timing of capex in LTE such as whether to sweat HSDPA and different strategies are being deployed here
- Business models and service monetisation – possibly the biggest issue but being addressed already as flat rate comes to an end for some operators and the array of tariffs mushrooms.
We believe that going forward there be some innovative business models derived – such as 2 sided models connected to commerce and advertising.
The variants will be many – but I think the issue will be this.
In very simple terms the more complex the model, the greater will be the challenge of communicating it to the vast majority of subscribers. I guess it goes back to the “exactly what is a megabyte?” question. The average user needs to be able to understand and service providers will need to address this.
Tags: LTE
hi,
One big one missing from the list –
no support for greenfield operators (you need to have a 3GPP network spare to hand)
Peter
Hi Peter
Yes I agree with you and this is the case for WiMAX deployments. But even some of those such as Yota in Russia are moving to LTE.
Regards
Howard