ABI Research has predicted that the next generation of superfast Long Term Evolution ( LTE ) based Mobile Broadband services will top 16 million subscribers the end of this year. Indeed 12 countries have already launched commercial LTE services, which will one day achieve peak (shared) download speeds of between 100Mbps and 1024Mbps (1Gbps).

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association recently reported that there were 100 LTE-ready devices. At present only 13% of those were Smartphone's and media tablets, but that will change. In 2014, more than 205 million LTE mobile devices will ship, 72% of which will be handsets.


However the real growth isn't expected to hit until the 2012-2014 period. A February 2011 study (here) from market intelligence firm iSuppli (IHS iSuppli) predicted that by 2014 LTE will be home to 303.1 Million subscribers, dwarfing rivals (e.g. WiMAX).

Ofcom's current UK timetable for LTE deployment, which is connected to its spectrum auction and release programme, suggests that LTE friendly mobile spectrum (800MHz and 2.6GHz) would not complete until "the end of 2013" (i.e. 2014 for the first services).

Happily the European Commission (EC) recently revised its rules to allow existing 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrums to run LTE and WiMAX services too. The deadline for this is 31st December 2011, which means that the first UK LTE services could potentially surface by early 2012.

Meanwhile O2 UK has already hinted that LTE services could be sold differently to existing Mobile Broadband solutions. O2 envisages a kind of two-tier internet experience, where they make intelligent use of the new platform to deliver only certain services at a faster speed (details). Kind of like an "M6 toll road" for content providers.