Sometime shortly after the New Year of 2015, an important milestone for LTE was crossed. In some corner of the planet, the 500,000,000th LTE Subscriber was activated. It is a remarkable achievement for a wireless technology that just over 10 years ago was first being proposed as a wireless technology.
I’ve blogged about how LTE was going to blow away WiMAX as early as 2010. Heck, before LTE’s first network was activated in 2009, T-Mobile’s Neville Ray predicted that LTE would have 99% of the 4G market by the end of 2014. He wasn’t too far off… LTE had at least 95% of the 4G market. Now, LTE is sounding the death knell for CDMA technology, and it could render all 3G wireless technologies obsolete within 5-10 years.
LTE has continued to outpace even the most optimistic of projections regarding how the technology would grow over time. At least 375 LTE networks are currently active across 130 countries. Although LTE’s footprint is relatively small compared with older wireless technologies, it has been positioned and initially launched in large metropolitan areas, where LTE’s simplified architecture is prized over more complicated 3G networks. In some countries, like the US, expansion has taken place to the point where now, over 99% of the citizens have access to a functioning LTE network.
And the one prediction I made in 2010 that was wrong as of 2012 has staged a remarkable reversal. Mainland China has finally launched LTE across 3 networks using TD-LTE and it has been a huge launch.
Right now, the US is the largest LTE country in terms of subscribers with just under 150 million subscribers—mostly AT&T and Verizon Wireless customers (shut up John Legere, I’ve seen the numbers, you and Sprint combined are lucky to maybe have 20% of the total LTE share in the US). But China is rapidly moving up the ladder. Currently in 2nd place with about 100 million subscribers across its three networks, China is expected to pass the US in terms of number of LTE subscribers by around mid-year. China’s largest cellular network, China Mobile, just blew past AT&T and Verizon to become the world largest LTE subscriber base, even though its network footprint is so small. Heck, China Mobile is so big, Apple provided China Mobile with its own unique iPhone models.
What the rise of China as a Wireless Force has done is that, for the first time ever, China is a major player in the Wireless World. For many years, Europe and the US were the innovators in Wireless Technology, with Japan having an impact as well. China was always playing catch-up. They yearned for the day when they would have significant input on wireless technologies. With LTE (in particular, TD-LTE), China has finally achieved being a voice in wireless tech. And with 5G now being proposed and tested against, China can write a technology of its own that the world can accept as a global standard.
In the end, China will return to a glory they have seen over most of the last 2000 years. What happens after they replace the US as Top Dog in LTE? Who cares? For now, LTE is the great wireless technology… At least until 5G comes around.
