Released

1Q 2012

Product Code

VM-LTEBS-102

Price

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At the end of 2011, LTE deployments gained momentum in multiple regions of the world. Infrastructure vendors now all have commercial LTE portfolio offerings for the service providers. Although it is difficult without direct input from each of the OEMs to size a vendor as a leader in LTE RAN solely based on contract wins and deployments, innovation factors as well as other implementation criteria have been considered in this vendor matrix. In the vendor matrix, a short summary of each company is given and in the matrix the score for each company is broken out in specifics. Each criterion that is part of the implementation or innovation subscores is shown, together with the weighted percentage that each score contributes toward the total. For infrastructure vendors, a large deployment contract win in a country like China is not comparable to smaller multiple LTE contract wins in less-populated countries. Large deployments play a key part in the development of a base station market leader, as well as for the standard. Partnerships outside of the service provider arena are vital. Establishing relationships with chipset vendors, device vendors, and application developers are important for reliable infrastructure products and interoperability, as well as the continued work on the standard. This is particularly applicable in finding and fixing any initial issues that may arise. These relationships bring an additional dimension to the infrastructure vendor's product offering. Relationships between competing base station infrastructure vendors are important, mainly for the further development of LTE, as well as for interoperability between base stations from different vendors. This adds value and more flexibility to their base station lineups that may attract certain vendors. Flexibility in providing a full end-to-end solution, from the radio access network (RAN) to the core network, is important and gives the infrastructure vendor a complete integration of solutions. This has the most appeal to smaller service providers that do not have the manpower or experience in deploying, maintaining, and understanding the end-to-end solutions of a brand new all-IP network standard. Research and development in TD-LTE, small cell base stations, multi-standard and self-organizing networks, and the features included within these aspects, show vendors’ innovation investment, and their long-term goals and efforts in driving their portfolios of LTE solutions, as well as the standard itself.