After starting the world’s first commercial LTE (Long Term Evolution) service through Telia Sonera in Sweden and Norway last December, global mobile operators are now maneuvering to deploy the next generation of wireless broadband service.

Recently AT&T in the U.S. announced that it had selected Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as equipment suppliers for its LTE network, scheduled to begin commercial service next year, while Verizon Wireless unveiled its intention to launch LTE services with portable devices this year. Motorola said it signed a contract with Zain Saudi Arabia to deploy the first LTE network in the Kingdom and will offer high-speed mobile broadband services in the second quarter. Additionally, NTT DoCoMo in Japan and China Telecom in China are on track to deploy commercial LTE services by the end of 2010.

At the Mobile World Congress 2010, which takes place in Barcelona, Spain, between February 15th and 18th, LTE is the top-of-the-top theme, while telecom equipment, device and chipset makers show their new leading-edge technologies and solutions to global operators.

Mobile operators are facing the need to expand network capacities and speeds so as to handle exploding data traffic, especially the surges as a result of mobile broadband sales and booming smartphones. Mobile carriers are expecting to increase data revenue from new subscriber usage patterns emerging with the mobile Internet era. According to a Nokia Siemens Networks prediction, by 2015, annual mobile data traffic will reach 23 exabytes – equivalent to 6.3 billion people each downloading a digital book every day.

This year is set to be a critical year for LTE as early commercial services get underway, said Informa Telecom & Media, a market research firm. The research firm forecasts that there will be 3.1 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2011. Another research firm, iDate, said a total of 380 million subscribers in the U.S., the EU-5, Scandinavia, China, Japan and South Korea will have access to mobile data services over a LTE network by 2015.

With the rosy forecast, telecom-gear makers are busy trying to attract new customers, in other words the global mobile operators. According to iSuppli, a market research firm, wireless infrastructure spending trends indicate that the wireless market is investing in 4G technology. The 4G market is expected to represent about 2.8 percent of total base station revenues in 2010, and this will grow to about 54 percent by 2013, the research firm said.

Industry camps are joining forces to prepare for the LTE era with launching of the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) initiative, which has the backing of more than 40 organizations from across the mobile ecosystem. More than 74 mobile operators from around the world have committed to plans, trials or deployments for LTE, according to the GSMA. The GSMA said it will also lead the development of the specifications that will enable interconnection and international roaming between LTE networks, and will complete that work by Q1 2011.

Innovative services and business models, such as VoLTE which can bring benefits to both operators and subscribers, need to be deployed if operators are to maximize the potential of LTE deployments, maintain ARPU levels and continue to be a smart pipe, iDate said.

Meanwhile, telecom gear providers have bolstered their technology leadership with demonstrations at the event.

Huawei, which has deployed 60 LTE networks, including lab trials, field trials and commercial networks, demonstrated data download speeds of up to 600 Mb/s using its LTE-Advanced system. The record speeds, which are 20 times faster than existing commercial 3G networks, are able to transmit a 4 GB DVD movie in less than one minute.

NGN presented a live demonstration of LTE with applications running in a real-network operating across the event venue. The company also demonstrated its support for 4G mobile broadband in China, by showcasing its Femtocell for TD-LTE.

Ericsson said it set a world record by showcasing LTE with a speed of 1 gigabit per second in the downlink utilizing Multi-Carrier technology and MIMO (Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output), and this runs on its commercial LTE hardware.

Alcatel-Lucent, which has forty LTE contracts for trials worldwide, announced LTE trials at Orange France, Telefonica and China Mobile, respectively.

NEC announced that it is supporting Telefonica O2 in its trial of LTE in the Slough area, Berkshire, UK, using its microwave backhaul solution, PASOLINK.

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