India at Vanguard of LTE TDD Rollout

India is one of only six countries worldwide to have commercial services, according to the latest statistics from the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA).

In total there are currently seven commercial LTE TDD deployments in six countries -- Brazil, India, Japan, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Sweden.

Bharti Airtel Ltd. is the operator that has put India on the map for LTE TDD, the technology that is being deployed by the BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) license-holders to provide 4G services. (See Bharti Launches 4G in Bengaluru and India Welcomes 4G Services.)

As the map shows, there are many more markets still in the process of studying or testing LTE TDD, including Australia, China, France, the U.K. and the U.S.

The more popular FDD version of the mobile broadband technology, which has a more mature ecosystem, has been deployed by 73 operators globally.

During the course of 2012 and into 2013, India will become an increasingly important market in the global LTE TDD sector as a growing number of BWA (Broadband Wireless Access) license-holders will launch services, introduce competition and stimulate the LTE TDD ecosystem of chipset firms, device manufacturers, applications developers and network infrastructure vendors. (See Idea Sets Sight On 3G Uptake, Aircel To Launch 4G By Dec 2012, IndiaWatch: RIL Set To Launch Broadband Services and Olive Builds 4G Devices With Altair Chips.)

That will have an important influence on the global market, as it will help speed up the maturity of the different products, encourage more vendors/suppliers/developers to enter the market and help introduce greater economies of scale into the LTE TDD ecosystem.

Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading