Europe takes a slow road to LTE deployments

European operators are lagging behind North American and Asia Pacific operators in LTE deployments, despite TeliaSonera being the first operator worldwide to launch a commercial LTE service in December 2009. There are numerous factors inhibiting LTE deployments in Europe, including a lack of LTE handsets, a poorly coordinated approach to licensing appropriate LTE spectrum and lack of widespread operator enthusiasm to deploy LTE right away. Special feature