4G Americas has announced that LTE subscriptions passed 200 million mark worldwide in December 2013. North America accounts around 50% of this. In North America and Latin America, LTE & HSPA subscriptions grew to 417 million connections in one year ending December 2013.

4G Americas has announced that LTE subscriptions passed 200 million mark worldwide in December 2013. North America accounts around 50% of this. In North America and Latin America, LTE & HSPA subscriptions grew to 417 million connections in one year ending December 2013. LTE & HSPA added 135 million subscriptions in 2013, approx 48 percent annual growth.

North America added 22 million new LTE subscriptions in the fourth quarter of 2013 where as Asia Pacific had nearly 11.6 million additions and Western Europe had nearly 5 million additional LTE connections.  Of total 200 million LTE connections, Asia Pacific and Western Europe contributed 78 million and 14 million connections respectively.

Latin America and Caribbean markets have 37 commercial LTE networks in 18 countries serving 1.7 million LTE connections at the end of 2013. 4G Americas forecast that it will have 6.4 million LTE connections at the end of 2014 where as 82.4 million LTE connections by 2018

4G Americas further reports tha GSM technology declined at an annual rate of 9.6 percent with 55 million fewer subscriptions due to the rapid migration to 3GPP mobile broadband.

Currently there are 7 commercial LTE-Advanced networks in 5 countries. U.S. service providers AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Sprint and Verizon are expected to deploy LTE-Advanced in 2014.  AT&T has deployed LTE-Advanced with Carrier Aggregation in the Chicago market already, though without a commercial announcement.