Two distinct groups of operators emerged at MWC. The first is lead by DoCoMo, Verizon Wireless and TeliaSonera, all announcing plans for a fast-lane deployment and commercial launch of LTE in 2010. The rest, led by tier 1 European MNOs, are pushing ahead with LTE trials, but have made no commitments to the short-term rollouts. T-Mobile stated that from a technical perspective it would be ready for LTE from 2010, but plans to spend the next two years boosting capacity of its HSPA networks. Orange expects the first commercial LTE services to become available no sooner than 2011, with HSPA subscriber migration taking place from 2012.
LTE holds out three main values to mobile operators: higher speeds, improvements in latency and spectral efficiency. Although the former is the most frequently quoted benefit, it is the latter two, along with the availability of spectrum, that dictate the timing of LTE launch and migration strategies. CDMA operators will be the first to transition to LTE to avoid the capacity crunch on their EVDO Rev A networks as well as high costs and complicated management of several overlay networks. Verizon Wireless, which acquired ample 700MHz spectrum in 2008, plans to expedite the deployment of its LTE network, announcing that it picked Ericsson and Alcatel Lucent for the initial rollout in the USA.
In Europe, where only a 5MHz TDD band is currently available for LTE, gradual rollouts and a demand driven migration will be a norm, slower in such markets as the UK, where MNOs face the most spectrum limitations. For all of Western European MNOs, the availability of digital dividend spectrum will be critical to provide indoor LTE coverage and better mobile data user experience. T-Mobile's CEO Hamid Akhavan was outspoken on the issue, stating that "digital dividend is absolutely critical for the development of mobile broadband on a large scale".