Despite the rising global popularity of long-term evolution (LTE) technology, second-generation (2G) and third-generation (3G) technologies would remain the dominant mobile platforms for the next decade.
The decline of 3G subscribers in the US and Europe was being offset by the technology’s growth in all other regions, particularly Africa, which would experience a 19% compounded yearly rise in use over the next five years, a new report by TeleGeography showed.
The ‘GlobalComms Forecast Service’ revealed that global 3G subscribers would, by 2019, surpass that of 2G subscribers, which currently accounted for 61% of global mobile subscribers, with 90% of India’s 950-million subscribers still connected to 2G networks.
Both of these technologies would continue to account for a larger share of subscribers than LTE, despite adoption of the latest technology growing at a faster rate than that of 3G.
Global LTE subscribers were projected to grow at a compounded rate of 35% a year, from 516-million to 2.3-billion, over the next five years, TeleGeography analyst Mark Gibson said.
South Korea recorded the strongest LTE adoption rate, with the technology accounting for 63% of wireless subscribers in 2014, followed by the US, where LTE accounted for just over half of wireless subscribers, and Japan, which had a LTE subscriber base of 41% in 2014.
“While LTE will continue to grow in each of these countries over the next five years to account for between 80% and 90% of their respective mobile subscribers, the rest of the world will begin to catch up,” he said, pointing to the expected surge in China.
By the end of 2014, 8% of wireless subscribers in China were using LTE – a number Gibson forecast would grow 39% by 2019.
“[By 2019], China alone will account for nearly one-third of global LTE subscribers,” he concluded.