The growing demand for on-the-go, real-time information and mobile-entertainment services will see the total number of subscribers for LTE and LTE-Advanced grow to nearly 411 million and 22 million respectively by the end of the year, Telecompaper.com reported on Aug 14, 2014. ABI Research\'s 4G-network deployment tracker anticipates that 45 networks will have commercially launched LTE-Advanced by the fourth quarter. Over 337 of the world\'s mobile networks had already deployed LTE by the end of the second quarter. The evolution of LTE to LTE-Advanced has seen the technology gain traction in regions like North America and the Asia-Pacific, with Western Europe trailing slightly behind in subscriber numbers.

While there are some upgrades and replacements of LTE mobile devices from the first wave of LTE adopters, a significant percentage of this year\'s mobile device shipments will still be to new LTE subscribers. ABI Research estimates that nearly 482 million LTE handsets will be shipped in 2014, up by nearly 150 million units from the previous year, and expects that number will grow to 1.34 billion by the end of 2019.

Global LTE network coverage is expected to cover more than 30 percent of the world\'s population by the end of this year. In tandem with mobile operators continuing to expand LTE coverage across all regions, operators such as SK Telecom and LG U+ in South Korea are increasing the level of competition. In a bid to lock down the most lucrative LTE customers, both operators will be launching unlimited LTE data plans in the fourth quarter featuring speeds of 300 Mbps through a three-band carrier aggregation.