GSA NTS DATABASE UPDATE MAY 2018

Global mobile Suppliers Association – GSA

www.gsacom.com

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NETWORK TYPES
• The May 2018 update of GSA’s NTS database highlights 140 operators investing in 5G worldwide,
including 67 in Europe

• GSA’s NTS database reports: Operators investing in 5G (running trials, acquiring licences, or
planning deployments), count by region
• A slight increase in the number of LTE
operators investing* worldwide from 858 at
the end of March 2018 to 861 by early May
2018, of which:
• 675* have launched services
• 112* have launched TDD-based services
• 295 operators investing in LTE-Advanced, of
which 246 have launched networks (up from
241 at the end of March 2018)
• GSA has also identified 131 operators investing
in LTE-Advanced Pro
• 140 operators known to be investing in 5G
networks (in the form of tests, trials, planned
and pilot deployments) at the start of May
2018, up from 134 at the end of March.
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* including LTE for mobile and FWA broadband services

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NETWORK FEATURES
• The NTS database tracks three LTE network features:
• Networks with 4x4 MIMO (or better) – 119 operators identified as investing, of which 60
have deployed / launched the technology within their commercial networks
• Networks with 256 QAM in the DL – 97 operators identified as investing, of which 52 have
deployed / launched the technology within their commercial networks
• Networks using carrier aggregation – 295 operators identified as investing

• Amongst the other features tracked:

• The number of operators investing in VoLTE was 226 at the start of May 2018; of which 147
have launched.
• 111 operators investing in NB-IoT networks at the start of May 2018.
52 deployed/launched.
• 40 investing in LTE-M networks. 15 deployed/launched.
• 26 investing in LAA at the start of May 2018 (2 with commercial networks). 10 operators
investing in LTE-U (2 with deployed/launched networks).

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LTE SPECTRUM BANDS

• GSA’s NTS database has counts of LTE The main FDD and TDD spectrum bands used for LTE
network investments in 24 different
bands / groups of band
• 1800 MHz, band 3 remains the
most-used band for LTE (320
launched networks – down by one
following the acquisition of Telenor
India by Airtel)
• 800 MHz, band 20 is in second place
(176 launched networks)
• Band 7 (2.6 GHz) is the third most
popular band, used in 158
commercial LTE networks
• Spectrum used for 5G development is
also tracked: spectrum in the 1 GHz to
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6 GHz range is being most used. GSA has
identified 57 operators that are using
this band range, plan to use it for trials,
or are licensed to use it.

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association

GLOBAL MOBILE SUPPLIERS ASSOCIATION – GSA

Promoting the Mobile Broadband Technology Roadmap

www.gsacom.com

© 2018 Global mobile Suppliers Association