ABI: 500,000 TD-LTE base stations will be deployed by 2016

At least half a million base stations will be installed or upgraded for TD-LTE services by the end of 2016, according to a new forecast from ABI Research. The report said that many carriers that had been banking on WiMAX 2 are rapidly switching to TD-LTE deployments. Although FDD-LTE remains the more popular variant of the network technology today, TD-LTE is expected to get a big push from the massive rollout China Mobile is expected to deploy. Currently, commercial TD-LTE service has been launched in Brazil, Japan, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and other countries and TD-LTE deployments are underway in Australia and Scandinavia as well. In the United States, Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) plans to launch TD-LTE service and will likely be a beneficiary of China Mobile's deployment. Clearwire announced in September that it will collaborate with China Mobile to speed up the development of TD-LTE devices. Release