Latin America. Between January and December 2018, new LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks were deployed in five countries in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, as a result of new spectrum allocations and investments by operators to continue the evolution of 4G networks.
As a result, LTE-A networks are now available in 13 of 19 countries in the region, according to a 5G Americas survey based on information published by regulators and telecom operators. This information is presented as an illustrative count to track lte development in the region.
LTE-A is an evolution of fourth generation (4G) LTE technology. Defined in the specifications of Release 10 of the 3GPP onwards, it allows to offer theoretical peak download speeds that exceed 1 Gbps, and enables a more efficient use of the radio spectrum, thanks to the carrier aggregation (CA) technique, among other advantages.
At the end of 2017, only 8 out of 19 countries had at least one commercial LTE-A deployment. During 2018, new networks with this technology were deployed for the first time in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and Panama. Of the countries in which LTE-A networks were deployed, three of them — Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama — have licensed new spectrum between 2017 and 2018, which shows the importance of allocating this resource to allow technological development.
According to the information available to 5G Americas, on average commercial LTE-A deployments have occurred on average 46 months after the start of operations of LTE networks, that is, after almost four years.
Until 2018, there were still six countries where LTE-A networks have not been deployed: Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela. The survey indicates that most LTE networks in the region were launched between 2012 and 2014 and most LTE-A start-ups have occurred between 2016 and 2018.
It is important that national administrations make available to operators spectrum available in bands such as 700 MHz, 1.9 GHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz (known as AWS) and 2.5 GHz, as they are bands that already have technology ecosystems and that have promoted the development of 4G connectivity in several markets in the region.
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