Spending on telecommunications infrastructure equipment is set to grow next year on the back of 4G investment after two years of decline, according to iSuppli.
Capital spending on wireless infrastructure throughout the world is projected to reach $40.3bn in 2011, up 6.7% from $37.8bn in 2009.
Expenditures fell 5.7% in last year and are expected to fall 2.3% this year.
“Starting in 2011, wireless carriers in industrialised countries will start to deploy 4G to attain faster speeds and unclog the heavy data traffic generated by the exploding use of smart phones,” says iSuppli’s Jagdish Rebello, “”this 4G-driven growth in capital spending will continue at least through 2014.”
Infrastructure capital spending accounts for approximately 30% of total wireless capex.
Most carriers in the developed are expected to choose LTE over Wimax.
LTE supporters are: NTT DoCoMo and KDDI in Japan; Vodafone and Orange in Europe; Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile in the US.
Carriers launching 4G will likely put in tiered pricing plans based on data access rates, prioritizing data traffic and requiring customers to pay higher access fees when using high-bandwidth services like mobile video or peer-to-peer mobile video gaming.