Consumers all over the world want the fastest network, with the highest quality of experience. This is no more evident than in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region where LTE is now being deployed widely across most of the developed markets in the region.
LTE growth is driven by consumer demand for data, the absence of fixed-line infrastructure in many parts of emerging APAC (EMAP) and the need to provide the network capacity to enable next-generation mobile and services. Rapid economic development has also been a factor in making mobile services more affordable and helped seed the LTE ambitions of operators.
In addition, access to high-speed LTE is facilitating a wide variety of socio-economic benefits across APAC, encouraging governments to incentivize operators to deploy next-generation networks.
Growth in LTE and the subsequent rise in mobile data traffic is inevitably leading to an increase in infrastructure investment. Operators face the challenge of efficiently scaling infrastructure which delivers the capacity to satisfy consumer appetite for mobile connectivity, and support the array of new services being deployed across the region.
This challenge is evident in the diversity of development across APAC’s mobile market, which has led to a multitude of LTE adoption scenarios. It is expected that the EMAP markets will be able to take most advantage of the demand for LTE rather than more developed regions that have more mature offerings.
However, the extensive capex and opex challenge in setting up new infrastructure is seeing operators struggle to make a successful business case. Increasingly, operators are turning to a new wave of efficient, flexible and high capacity wireless technologies, including point-to-multipoint (PMP) microwave.