GSA, the Global mobile Suppliers Association, confirms that 200 LTE networks in 76 countries were commercially launched by 31 July 2013.
146 commercial LTE networks were in service at the end of 2012. An additional 54 operators have launched LTE service in the first 7 months of 2013.
Alan Hadden, President of the GSA, said: “In this interim announcement GSA confirms that 106 LTE networks were commercially launched in the last 12 months, representing 112% annual growth. LTE is a mainstream mobile broadband technology and is the fastest developing mobile system technology ever.”
LTE service has been introduced to 12 new markets so far this year: Chile, Iceland, Iraq, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Qatar, Spain, Thailand, US Virgin Islands, and Venezuela.
LTE is a single global 3GPP standard with an FDD mode for operators using paired spectrum, and a TDD mode for operators using unpaired spectrum.
The breakdown of the 200 commercially launched networks announced today is as follows:
182 networks were deployed using the FDD mode
9 networks were deployed in TDD mode (sometimes referred to as TD-LTE)
9 networks are using both FDD and TDD modes
200 Total