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Mobile services based on 4G LTE services are steadily expanding across global markets, providing subscribers with the type of responsive Internet browsing experience that previously was only possible on wired broadband connections. With more than 200 commercial LTE networks in operation as of August 2013 1, LTE subscriptions are expected to exceed 1.3 billion by the end of 2018 2. LTE's rapid uptake, based on exponential growth in network data traffic, has opened the industry's eyes to an important reality: the mobile industry must deliver an economically sustainable capacity and performance growth strategy; one that offers increasingly better coverage and a superior user experience at lower cost than existing wireless systems, including LTE. This strategy will be based on a combination of network topology innovations and new terminal capabilities. Simple network economics also require that the industry's strategy enable new services, new applications, and ultimately new opportunities to monetize the user experience. To address these pressing requirements, many expert prognosticators are turning their attention to future mobile broadband technologies and standards (i.e., 5G) as well as evolutions of the 3GPP's existing LTE standard and IEEE 802.11 standards.
Bangerter et al. (Sat,) studied this question.