LTE plans brought forward despite downturn

The analyst firm said that the tough economy ‘does not seem to have dampened enthusiasm’ for the technology.

Verizon is said to be one of several carriers to bring forward deployment plans, despite the economic downturn.

“ABI Research believes that NTT will also deploy LTE in Japan in 2009,” said Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst at the firm.

“We forecast that by 2013 operators will spend over US$8.6 billion on LTE base station infrastructure alone.

“For operators that have already deployed 3G networks, LTE will be a key CAPEX driver over the next five years,” she said.

LTE application development is also expected to drive investment as operators work to determine which services to deploy on their networks, said Manjaro.

US-based carriers Sprint and Verizon have both announced that they will provide third-party access to their GPS data, according to Manjaro.

”The resulting new applications will tie mobility and presence aspects together to create more compelling services than in the past,” she said.

“This is significant because it represents the beginning of a new generation of application development which will leverage the vast amounts of data in operators’ networks.”

Locally, it has been reported that Telstra will deploy the technology sometime in the 2010 to 2011 timeframe.