As operators around the world move from LTE trials to commercial deployments, they will likely spend almost US$3 billion in 2011 and potentially US$16.5 billion in 2016 on base stations, said Jake Saunders, vice president for forecasting for ABI Research.
The firm believes that around 32,000 base stations will be upgraded and retrofitted to support the deployment of LTE this year. Around 19,000 of these units will be installed at new sites to provide better capacity and improve coverage for enterprise and residential subscribers.
ABI maintains that the majority of the base stations installed this year will be for operation in the 2.5GHz and related bands, although operators are keen to push forward with deploying LTE at lower frequencies. Article