US & Japan Lead Race for High Speed Mobile Broadband as LTE Revenues to Exceed $200bn Globally by 2015

UK lags behind leaders after new spectrum auction timetable announced

Hampshire, UK: Wednesday, 15th December 2010 - According to a new Juniper Research report, the first beneficiaries of LTE mobile broadband networks will be business users based in developed countries, led by the US and Japan amongst other countries. Juniper forecasts that global service revenues will exceed $200bn by 2015, from a standing start in 2011.

LTE business users will benefit from speed or quality of service guarantees thereby alleviating service dropouts. However, spectrum auction timetables in some European countries such as the UK where bidding does not start until 2012, will delay users experiencing these benefits.

Revenue Drivers
Juniper’s new report found that LTE premium services for high-end business users will be critical revenue drivers for mobile operators.

Howard Wilcox, author of the new 4G LTE Revenue Opportunities report noted: “Our business modeling demonstrated that high traffic enterprise subscribers using web, email and video services will be the critical early adopter segment to benefit from LTE. There is an opportunity for premium pricing plans that will drive service revenues and the report shows this.”

The report however also forecasts that consumer users will typically spend at only about half the monthly rate of enterprise users.

Further findings
• Operators can attract and retain high-end business users through premium services which could generate double the ARPU in a high usage scenario;     
• North America, Far East & China and Western Europe will together account for nearly 90% of LTE service revenues by 2015;
• Revenues from consumer users will remain under half of total revenues until at least 2015.       

Report Details
Juniper Research examines the LTE opportunity, evaluating three revenue scenarios based on a variety of pricing and user take-up assumptions. The report includes an extensive five year forecasting suite covering enterprise and consumer subscribers and the conclusions of Juniper’s comprehensive research survey on hot LTE topics.

The 4G LTE Whitepaper and 4G LTE video and further details of the study, ‘4G LTE Revenue Opportunities: Business Models, Scenarios and Operator Strategies 2010-2015’ can be downloaded from www.juniperresearch.com.  Alternatively please contact John Levett at john.levett@juniperresearch.com, telephone +44(0)1256 830002.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.