Market intelligence firm iSuppli (IHS iSuppli) has predicted that Long Term Evolution ( LTE ) will ultimately win out in the race to become the next generation of 4G focused Mobile Broadband technologies. The analysts firm estimates that by 2014 LTE will be home to 303.1 Million subscribers, dwarfing WiMAX and its meagre 33.4 Million users.

Today most UK mobile operator connected internet surfers use 3G based HSPA technology, which can deliver download speeds of up to 14.4Mbps (42Mbps with HSPA+), yet consumers usually see, at best, just a fraction of that speed. The national average tends to hover around 2Mbps.

By contrast both LTE and WiMAX will be able to push peak speeds of between 100Mbps and 1000Mbps, although end-users will probably only see a small fraction of this (similar to today's HSPA tech). Some admittedly very rough early predictions point to real-world subscriber speeds being in the range of 8-30Mbps.


The current UK timetable for LTE deployment, which is based off Ofcom's related spectrum auction and release programme, suggests that the new products will not be ready in this country until early 2014. Customers adopting such services will also need to buy new hardware (e.g. handsets, USB Modems etc.), which could hamper the initial uptake.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has also designated that neither of the first generation LTE or WiMAX solutions, which cannot deliver the top speed of 1Gbps, will be considered true 4G technologies. However, the bulk of mobile operators will still adopt that designation, for marketing purposes.