
Few people are as excited as I am about the coming Long Term Evolution fourth-generation wireless networks, but today I got a reality check thanks to IntoMobile drawing my attention to statements made earlier this month by Qualcomm’s VP of technology, Jou Yu-chuen, who said that he didn’t see LTE as being widespread until 2014.
I trust Qualcomm, because the people who sell the chips are the ones who know when they’ll be needed — their business depends on it. Meanwhile, carriers hyping the technology have every reason to emphasize how soon LTE will be available, especially since it will enable them to implement new pricing models (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d) that take advantage of the ever-increasing demand for data.
In addition to the Qualcomm veep, there’s also an ABI Research study that came out in yesterday forecasting that by 2014 just 150 million LTE subscriptions will be activated worldwide. By that time Verizon’s LTE network will cover the U.S., giving its 90 million subscribers access to LTE data cards and handsets. So ABI is clearly pessimistic about LTE adoption.
It may have good reason, especially when it comes to regions outside the U.S. India and China are currently rolling out 3G networks, not 4G, while Europe telecommunications regulator just said last week it would clear the 800 MHz spectrum for mobile broadband, beginning a process that the U.S. undertook three years ago to free up the 700 MHz spectrum. For consumers this matters, because when it comes to putting radios inside phones, the cost of an LTE radio will be determined by how many are needed and produced. The more that are made, the cheaper they will be, which means that early LTE handsets will likely be big, bulky and expensive until demand hits a point where LTE radios and handsets will become cheap, small and ubiquitous.
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