It is party time for 4G stakeholders with LTE nearing 250 million connections globally. But India cannot party this year because Reliance Jio Infocomm’s roll outs are yet to take off, while Bharti Airtel is yet to find new ways to spruce up user base.

Though Indians cannot cheer, it is party time for Asia Pacific telecoms. Look at the LTE statistics in the first quarter. North America has 47 percent of LTE user base, Asia Pacific 39 percent and Western Europe 10 percent.

North America has LTE subscribers of 115 million and Asia Pacific has 95 million.

India has a couple of lakhs of 4G users against nearly 850 million mobile connections. As TelecomLead reported earlier lack of viable business, lack of cost effective 4G-enabled smartphones, lack of voice on LTE networks and keenness to spread high speed broadband network across the country by telecoms impacted 4G growth in India.

On the other hand, LTE has 30 percent share of cellular market in North America, said 4G Americas in a statement on Thursday.

LTE globally

It is a long way to go for LTE that represented 4 percent of all cellular connections worldwide. 5G will be getting ready for 2020 launch – with Korean operators gearing up for the launch. Experts say 4G and 5G will live together – complimenting each other. 5G will spruce up M2M connections.

LTE is inching closer to 3G though it will take several years to take on the third generation networks.

There are 294 LTE networks in 106 countries and 8 LTE-Advanced networks in 6 countries against 551 HSPA networks in 201 countries and 362 HSPA+ networks in 156 countries.

North America

North America is spearheading LTE with connections grew to 115 million subscriptions, representing 30 percent of the 387 million total mobile subscriptions in the region in the first quarter of 2014.

The North America has 47 percent of 245 million LTE connections globally.

By 2019, LTE will have 85 percent share of market in North America, said Ericsson Mobility Report.

Latin America

In Latin America, LTE subscriptions grew 50 percent from 2 million to 3 million. This means, World Cup 2014 did not influence mobile broadband users.

The LTE and HSPA mobile broadband market share grew to 30 percent with 215 million of the total 717 million cellular connections in the region. LTE subscriptions will experience annual growth rate of nearly 100 percent for the next five years.

LTE connections will surpass 2.3 billion by 2020.

Baburajan K