A recent GSA LTE report confirms that 194 LTE networks are commercially launched in 75 countries. Overall 391 firm LTE network deployments are planned or in progress in 120 countries including existing commercial launches.

A further 52 operators in 10 additional countries are engaged in pre-commercial LTE technology pilot trials, tests or studies.

GSA has also raised forecast that there will be 260 commercial LTE networks in 93 countries by end 2013.

The announced commercial launches include 18 LTE TDD systems. Where as, 84 network launches are in LTE1800 (band 3) across 45 countries either as a single band system, or as part of a multi-band deployment. The next most widely used band for LTE deployments is 2.6 GHz.