United States Leads the World in Adoption of 4G LTE Service

[dgstorm]

According to recent reports from Pyramid analyst Emily Smith, the U.S. leads the world by a large margin in adoption of 4G LTE service. With companies like Verizon, MetroPCS, AT&T and Sprint investing heavily into LTE expansion, the data shows that this trend will continue. According to the report, Verizon, AT&T and MetroPCS account for 47% of all global LTE connections in 2011. Compare that to the other 26 carriers world-wide that offer the service holding the other 53% and you can start to see the disparity in adoption rate.

Furthermore, the U.S. is also leading when it comes to LTE device sales, with 5.4 million units, or 71% of all sales of LTE devices world-wide. Another comparison that the report made was the LTE adoption between Verizon and Japan's NTT DoCoMo. This data shows a huge difference in population coverage. Verizon is projected to have 60% of Americans covered by the end of the year, while DoCoMo aims at a mere 20% by March 2012.

Source: PhoneArena

[alphawave7]

Ah..but there's a fly in the ointment...LTE hasn't been fully approved by the FCC (granted waiver is at risk, thanks to Solyndra and other political fallout): (warning, LONG read)
Politically-connected LightSquared pushes wireless Internet plan despite GPS concerns | iWatch News

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSq..._Investigation

[Ollie]

And American LTE had to be reluctantly inducted to LTE standards due to its slower non-LTE speeds. It's kinda like cheating.