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Suppliers such as Nokia and Motorola claim LTE eliminates many of the problems of speed, reliability and coverage that have plagued its predecessors, as well as being cheaper for operators to implement.
For business customers, the benefits should be more reliable, higher-speed cellular data networks that don't drop out or lose speed as you move between cells. The networks will also be capable of handling the much greater throughput of data in real time that's required to support such services as mobile video streaming and conferencing, web-based applications and services and the rapid transfer of large files. Where 3G has download speeds of 14Mb/second, LTE has a download data transfer rate of 100Mb/second.
Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President for the Middle East division of Huawei Technologies, which supplies LTE technology, says he expects the technology to be deployed in the region at the same time as other mature telecoms markets across the world, starting this year. Initially, he thinks it will get laptop use, rather than via handsets, as early adopters use dongles to take advantage of the technology's fast speeds. But handsets will quickly follow, he says.
And for operators which have not yet rolled out 3G, he believes they should move directly to LTE from second-generation technologies. 'There's no point investing [in 3G] when there's something else in the pipeline which looks much better and is more advanced,' he told AMEinfo.com.
Middle East uptake
LTE has had a slower start in the Middle East than in regions such as Europe, but projects are now underway. Although many operators are keeping plans close to their chests, Zain Bahrain is working with Nokia Siemens Network to upgrade its network to the all-IP LTE, and hopes to be the first to go live in the region.
Zain is pushing the faster speeds as a core benefit, saying customers will have a 'click-bang' internet experience, with latency down to between 10 and 20ms. And although LTE, like 3G, is a data rather than voice technology, it is also preparing for standards-based voice over LTE. A Kuwaiti company, Zain plans to export its LTE experiences to its other territories.
David Tanner, principal consultant at Mott MacDonald, says regional players such as Etisalat and Zain want to implement the latest technologies, and so be seen as world leaders in them. 'Both of these operators have been evaluating LTE using test networks for some time now and commercial launches can be expected either later this year or in 2011,' he says.
However, most accept it will be some years before there's widespread availability of LTE across the region. 'At the outset, it's likely LTE will only be deployed in urban areas where there's high demand, which will take around two to three years. Deployment beyond these areas will be depend on individual operators' technology strategies, in particular how they plan to use the plethora of standards (GSM, Edge, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE) to deliver service to their customers,' says Tanner.
Wimax alternative
In addition, LTE is not the only '4G' cellular technology in contention (while LTE is a big step towards 4G, it actually falls short of the specification, but many think it will ultimately be marketed as 4G). There's also Wimax - another similarly high-speed, microwave-based wireless technology that is being used both for high-speed cellular networks and for extending the reach of fixed broadband networks into hard-to-cable areas.
Staff
