LTE Adoption Will Take Some Time: It Always Does

It will take at least five years before Long Term Evolution devices represent 25 percent of mobile broadband device sales (PC dongles, not phones), once they are introduced, and it might take as long as 16 years before LTE device sales reach their peak, based on past experience with new mobile air interfaces and device sales, according to Keith Mallinson, founder of WiseHarbor Research.

Assuming the first LTE networks activate in early 2011, that implies it will be 2016 before dongles and aircards based on LTE will represent a quarter of broadband dongle and aircard sales.

Mallinson also predicts it will be 2019 before LTE device sales are equal to CDMA-based technology devices, such as those using EV-DO, and HSPA/HSPA+.

History suggests that new mobile technologies to peak demand takes far longer than the five years, and as much as 16 years for a mobile technology to mature.

That suggests today's third-generation networks will be dominant for quite some time. AT&T Mobility, for example, recently surprised observers when it decided that, instead of moving directly to LTE, it would upgrade its existing 3G network to HSPA+. That will prove a quick bandwidth boost from about 3.5 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps for a relatively small amount of capital investment, even as it plans to start building its 4G network in 2011.

But such plans also mean that AT&T can target its 4G build to the most-dense markets, and count on the faster 3G network in less-dense areas that the company might take some time to build out, as typically is the case when new mobile networks are constructed..

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