Operators that bring 4G LTE to market ahead of their competitors stand a good chance of capturing significant market share, according to Glenn Booth, Vice President and General Manager, LTE Business Unit, Alcatel-Lucent.
Booth was speaking about the benefits that Alcatel-Lucent’s early-adopter advantages have gleaned since they rolled out LTE networks. He was presenting a session at the vendor’s annual Technology Symposium, held in New Jersey, USA.
“Operators have a very brief window of opportunity to meaningfully take a lead,” he said.
“Verizon will get many billions more dollars over a five-year period for being the first to mark [in the US], compared to number two. And number two will get about 25 percent more revenue than number three.”
Booth added that the roll-out of LTE in the United States had completely changed the country’s operator landscape over the past two years. “The rankings of the operators now have been formed over the past two years and it’s down to the deployment of LTE,” he said.
Because of this, and a number of other factors, Booth explained that operators are now highly motivated to deploy LTE-enabled networks. He said that LTE was proving to become a more cost-effective technology compared to 2G and 3G, “by a significant margin”.
Alcatel-Lucent is strongly targeting early-adopter operators when it comes to its LTE-related products. That said, the company will also accommodate those who want to be fast followers or else disrupt their markets, Booth said.
