A latest report from GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) confirms that 263 LTE networks have commercially launched in 97 countries till date. In last year alone, 112 LTE networks were launched worldwide. 

GSA now forecasts there will be at least 350 LTE networks in commercial service by end 2014. GSA expects more deployments of carrier aggregation and other LTE-Advanced features, growth in voice services enabled by VoLTE, and a significant expansion of international LTE roaming services.

Overall, 508 operators are now investing in LTE in 144 countries. This is made up of 456 firm operator commitments to build LTE networks in 135 countries, plus 52 additional operators engaged in various trials, studies, etc. in a further 9 countries. From amongst the 456 committed operators, 263 have commercially launched their services, which is 75% more than a year ago.

The most widely used band in network deployments continues to be 1800 MHz which is used in 44% of commercially launched LTE networks. 115 operators worldwide have now launched LTE1800 (band 3) systems, 37% higher than 6 months ago, in 61 countries, either as a single band system, or as part of a multi-band deployment. The next most popular contiguous bands are 2.6 GHz (band 7) as used in 27% of networks in commercial service today, followed by 800 MHz (band 20) used in 12% of networks, and AWS (band 4) used in 8% of networks.

The report also highlights a growing list of operators who have commercially launched or are preparing to introduce enhancements to their networks including multicarrier support and deploying LTE-Advanced features, especially carrier aggregation. Many additional operators are trialing carrier aggregation with some combining two 20 MHz carriers to enable a theoretical peak downlink speed of 300 Mbps, for commercialization by mid-2014.