The theme at CTIA in Las Vegas is mobile broadband and the shift to 4G. In this morning’s keynote, AT&T’s CEO Ralph de la Vega said that the U.S. is facing unprecedented demand for mobile broadband and that the U.S. is moving faster than any other country in the world to deploy the fastest networks. “Almost any way you look at it, the U.S. is leading the way,” he said.
Here’s how the U.S. is ahead on mobile broadband:
—The U.S. has 117 million 3G subscribers, or 18 percent of the world’s 3G subs and more than any other country in the world.
—When looking at the fastest 3G networks, the U.S. has 33 percent of the world’s advanced customers.
—The U.S. only has 7 percent of the world’s subscribers, and yet, one out of five 3G subscribers being added today are in the U.S., according to Morgan Stanley.
—In the last five years, WiFi hotspots tripled, and the U.S. has twice as many than the next closest country, or roughly 70,000.
At the show this week, we’ll hear from Sprint (NYSE: S) and Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR), which are rolling out a joint 4G network based on the WiMax standard; Verizon Wireless will talk about building the world’s first large-scale LTE network; and T-Mobile USA is is cranking up speeds on its 3G network.
Clearwire, which already has 4G running in 27 markets in the U.S., announced this morning the markets where it will build in next. In 2010, the company expects to cover up to 120 million people. New markets being launched this year include: New York City, Houston, Boston, Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Denver, Minneapolis, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City. Additional cities will be announced later this year.
Tomorrow, Verizon Wireless is hosting a press event that will answer questions on its latest efforts in rolling out an LTE, and Sprint Nextel is also on hand to give drive tests of its WiMax network in downtown Las Vegas, which is considered a very difficult market because of all the large casinos. During a tour, network speeds ranged between 3 and 6 mbps, but also dropped to as low as 1 mbps and soared to speeds as high as 11 mbps. The company is expected to make additional announcements at its press conference this afternoon.
Iyad Tarazi, Sprint’s VP of network development and engineering, helped to put into perspective why we need a 4G network today. He said networks used to be more advanced than the phones people, but now phones have leap-frogged the networks: they have high-speed processors and are capable of taking high-resolution photos and video, but you have to wait until you get home to upload them to the web. He said Sprint users who have upgraded from a BlackBerry to an Android phone, use 10 times the bandwidth than they did before. These are all signs that the networks are starting to lag behind, he said, “This is an indication that the network could do more.”