There will be around 22.4 million long term evolution (LTE) users in Western Europe by 2013, according to new research.
Analysis from Frost and Sullivan has said that the service revenue of both WiMax and LTE would total up to 9,685.4 million (8,683.16 million) by that year.
Frost and Sullivan programme manager Luke Thomas predicted other consumer electronic devices would also become embedded with LTE technology. The research said that operators would need to stop locking-in client devices to their mobile broadband access networks.
"3G LTE and Mobile WiMax will eventually lead operators to move to an open' access, any client device connected internet model," Thomas said in a statement.
The research also said that even though mobile data usage was on the rise in the past year, the revenue made from it had remained flat.
This means that network costs needed to decline, and that there would be a bigger focus on margin and production costs when it came to LTE.
It was only earlier this year that Motorola started testing its new LTE network in the UK.
