Harmonized Ecosystem is the Key to LTE TDD's Global Scale

Boston, MA - March 13, 2014 - According to a new Strategy Analytics report “LTE TDD is Gaining Momentum in Mobile Broadband Market with Benefit from Harmonized Standard and Global Ecosystem” LTE is rapidly establishing itself as the global 4G standard to meet the rising demand for higher speed mobile broadband on new and existing spectrum, including unpaired or TDD spectrum. The Strategy Analytics report, recommends that to fully leverage the unified LTE standard, the industry must seize the opportunity to create a harmonized ecosystem, supporting both LTE FDD and TDD products and solutions.

The focus of 4G competition is moving from coverage to higher data speeds and increased capacity. Leading operators are now not only exploiting new frequency bands to deploy additional LTE carrier channels but also refarming existing spectrum. They are also exploring new spectrum to support future traffic growth. The 3.5GHz band looks to be a good candidate in near term where LTE TDD can provide either fixed or mobile broadband access.

“Sprint’s Spark program is the latest proof that LTE TDD offers an efficient solution for mobile operators to increase their broadband capacity using higher frequency bands, while refarming lower frequencies with LTE FDD to provide good coverage and spectral efficiency,” noted Guang Yang, Senior Analyst for Strategy Analytics Wireless Networks & Platforms. “Hybrid LTE FDD and TDD networks deployed in multiple frequency bands can help operators rapidly achieve a good balance between network coverage and capacity. For operators with more limited access to paired spectrum, TDD provides a good option to deploy 4G LTE while still leveraging common LTE networking equipment and devices, as long as deployment bands are globally or at least regionally harmonized.

“The window of opportunity is open for LTE TDD’s global development,” added Sue Rudd, Director Service Provider Analysis. “The unified global 3GPP LTE standard provides significant technical commonality and a good foundation for commercial harmonization between both modes, but the ecosystem for LTE TDD does not yet quite match its FDD counterpart. The industry needs to pursue commercial products and solutions that support both TDD and FDD to achieve global scale economies.”

As a duplexing mode of the 3GPP LTE standard, LTE TDD shares the same network architecture, protocol stack and common physical layer technologies with LTE FDD systems. This enables tight and seamless interworking that should enable operators who implement an integrated FDD/TDD operation to reduce operating costs and provide users an enhanced experience that will increase their market value.