EVDO Rev A numbers will keep going up

The industry hype pushing UMTS/HSPA to the front of the industry’s collective mind is in reality not stopping CDMA operators upgrading their networks to give additional capacity for all those bandwidth eating data services, not to mention the ever increasing general traffic load.

In just 12 months from the second quarter of 2007 EVDO Rev A subscriber numbers globally jumped a massive 800% according to respected research company ABI.

The biggest jumps came from the American market and the unstoppable South Koreans.

ABI consider that the increased support for LTE from incumbent CDMA operators does not imply the imminent death of EVDO Rev A and B, because LTE is addressing different market needs compared to 3G.

In fact ABI predict that EVDO Rev A subscribers will top out at over 54 million by 2013 while Rev B subscribers will also show a steady and sure increase up to 25 million.

Worldwide, well over 30 million subscribers are utilizing HSDPA while just 3.2 million subscribers are making use of HSUPA networks.

In Asia-Pacific and Western Europe upgrades to HSUPA are mushrooming and there may be as many as 139 million HSUPA customers by that same 2013 milepost.

“HSPA+ will contest with LTE and mobile WiMAX in the mobile broadband space,” adds Asia-Pacific vice president Jake Saunders. The 100Mbps download data rate difference between LTE (20MHz) and HSPA+ may not attract mid-tier operators to migrate, as LTE is based on OFDM technology that requires new components, while a move to HSPA+ is perceived to be more gradual transition.”

Big numbers of GSM 900 subscribers across the globe, and the arguably high possibility of refarming the spectrum for UMTS, causes ABI to speculate that the majority of these subscribers, which will reach an estimated 1.2 billion by 2013, will be on a 900MHz-only band.

ABI further predicts that the runner up would be dual-band users on 900MHz and 1800MHz (one billion by 2013).

2100MHz subscriber numbers are forecast to ramp up steadily with a CAGR of 23.5% between 2007 and 2013.