LTE time division duplex (LTE-TDD) will gain significant traction in the global market over the next 5 years. It currently only covers 6.4% of the world’s population, but by 2018, ABI Research anticipates coverage to grow to 49%.
By comparison, LTE deployments in legacy WCDMA markets are expected to deliver population coverage of 57%. The growth in LTE-TDD coverage can be attributed to the anticipated commitments by China Mobile going commercial in 2014, as well as markets like Indonesia and India making serious investments in LTE-TDD networks.
Furthermore, ABI Research anticipates a number of LTE frequency division duplexing (LTE-FDD) operators to augment their networks with LTE-TDD in additional spectrum bands to improve network capacity.