LTE Used by 20% of Global Mobile Subscribers

source: Ovum

Some 19.5 percent of mobile subscriptions worldwide use 4G at the end of the second quarter of 2016, according to the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA).

Long Term Evolution (LTE) subscriptions reached 1.453 billion in June 2016.

On a yearly basis, more than  684 million LTE subscriptions were added over the past year, equivalent to 89 percent annual growth.

The GSA now estimates that the number of LTE and LTE-Advanced subscriptions worldwide will pass the 3G/WCDMA-HSPA global total in 2019.  

Over 33 percent of mobile operators have moved to LTE-Advanced, with some LTE-Advanced Pro systems expected to support peak downlink speeds up to 1 Gbps by the end of 2016.

And though gigabit speeds are expected to be a core feature of 5G, 4G increasingly will move toward that level over the next five years.

North America and Asia will each account for more than 40 percent of global 5G subscriptions at the end of 2021, followed by Europe with more than 10 percent of subscriptions, with the Middle East and Africa accounting for the remainder.

Ovum estimates that 5G services will be available in more than 20 markets worldwide by the end of 2021, with services in all four major world regions.

However, the vast majority of 5G subscriptions will be concentrated in the US, Japan, China, and South Korea, where major operators have revealed aggressive timelines for launching 5G services.