Finally, after a couple of attempts, the Russian operator Yota has managed to launch the country’s first LTE network in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Yota had earlier signed up other mobile operators including MegaFon, MTS, Rostelecom and VimpelCom to share a single LTE network on a wholesale basis – which Yota will build to deliver LTE mobile broadband services in the 2.6 GHz spectrum to 180 cities by 2014. This network is expected to then serve over 70 million people and will accelerate LTE rollout in Russia.
As operators around the world are rapidly launching networks, we at Juniper Research have been monitoring the different pricing models and business cases LTE could offer the operators. There is a great need for operators to review their tariff structures to balance the need to monetise the greatly increased data throughput, yet still offer attractive packages. Overall, they will have to present customers with a simple, useable, affordable yet innovative LTE mobile broadband proposition to initially appeal to high-end business users.
To wrap that up, let me just leave you LTE enthusiasts with one final data point before Christmas – as per our research, worldwide service revenues generated by LTE mobile networks are forecast to grow rapidly, exceeding $265 billion by 2016. We believe, whilst the total number of LTE consumer subscribers will be higher than enterprise in 2016, it is a different picture from a revenues viewpoint, with the consumer segment accounting for under half of total revenues.
Tags: LTE, LTE Operator Strategies, LTE Service Revenue, LTE Strategies, Yota
Is TDD-LTE deployed to make easier migration WiMAX?
Many thanks for your comment.
At the moment, it certainly looks like WiMAX operators are migrating their networks to LTE-TDD. Multi-standard base stations supporting both WiMAX and LTE can make this migrations smooth and easy. This would also enable a smooth migration path for operators towards 4G and beyond. One perfect example is Sprint’s and Clearwires 4G /LTE strategy – please refer to my previous blogs.