GSA NTS DATABASE UPDATE JANUARY 2018

Global mobile Suppliers Association – GSA

www.gsacom.com

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association

NETWORK TYPES
• The January 2018 update of GSA’s NTS database shows continued investment in advanced
mobile technologies by operators worldwide

• GSA’s NTS database reports: Operators investing in LTE, count by region (includes mobile
• A slight increase in the number of and FWA networks)
LTE investors* worldwide from 846
at the end of November to 848 at the
end of December, of which:
• 651 have launched services
• 105 have launched TDD-based
services
• 277 LTE-Advanced investors, of which
219 have launched networks
• 119 operators investing in pre-
standards 5G networks at the end of
December up from 116 a month
earlier

* including LTE for mobile and FWA services © 2017 Global mobile Suppliers Association

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association

NETWORK FEATURES
•  The NTS database tracks three LTE network features:
•  Networks with 4x4 MIMO (or better) – 95 operators identified as investing
•  Networks with 256 QAM in the DL – 85 operators identified as investing
•  Networks using carrier aggregation – 276 operators identified as investing

•  Amongst the other features tracked:

•  The number of operators investing in VoLTE rose during December from 212 to 217; of
which 133 have launched. (One more since the database update – Vodafone India takes this
total to 134).
•  91 operators investing in NB-IoT, up from 87 at the end of November. 39 launched.
•  34 investing in LTE-M/Cat M1. Nine launched.
•  21 investing in LAA, up from 18 at the end of November.

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association

LTE SPECTRUM BANDS
The main FDD and TDD spectrum bands used for LTE

•  GSA’s NTS database has counts of

LTE network investments in 23
different bands / groups of band
•  1800 MHz, band 3 remains the
most-used band for LTE (317
launched networks)
•  800 MHz, band 20 is in second
place (174 launched networks)
•  Band 7 (2.6GHz) is the third most
popular band, used in 156
commercial LTE networks
•  Spectrum used for 5G trials is also
tracked: data is now available on 113
operators in 56 countries. © 2017 Global mobile Suppliers Association

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association

GLOBAL MOBILE SUPPLIERS ASSOCIATION – GSA

Promoting the Mobile Broadband Technology Roadmap

www.gsacom.com

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association