"4.5G": LTE-Advanced Pro users will grow rapidly

According to foreign media reports, market research firm ABI Research predicts that the number of LTE-Advanced Pro users will grow rapidly in the next four years, soaring from 16.5 million at the end of 2016 to more than 641 million in 2021.

ABI Research said the growth will be driven primarily by demand in the Asia-Pacific, North America and Western Europe regions, which will account for 87 percent of the global user base.

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“LTE-Advanced Pro continues to bring substantial enhancements to wireless networks,” said Lianjie Su, senior analyst at ABI Research. “Gigabit-class LTE, one of the fastest downlink throughputs in LTE-Advanced Pro, is changing the way mobile users interact with their devices. End users can now access cloud-based applications and stream 2K and 4K videos anytime, anywhere. Operators can also benefit by increasing utilization of their networks.”

Jake Saunders, vice president of ABI Research, noted that the technology provides a "capital expenditure-friendly" option for mobile operators to upgrade their networks.

“5G may still be out of reach for many operators, but with incremental investment, LTE-Advanced Pro is guaranteed to deliver the required capabilities, creating new business cases for operators and a better user experience for end users, while preparing operators for 5G deployments,” said Sanders.

ABI Research said there are about 120 LTE-Advanced Pro trials or commercial deployments around the world, including in Australia, the United States, Japan and South Korea.

This technology can provide downlink speeds of 450MBps to 1.2GBps, using 3-component carrier aggregation (and above), 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output antennas, and 256QAM (downlink) and 16QAM (uplink). It is one of several upgrades to LTE that are designed to bridge the gap between LTE and 5G.