Vodafone – the world’s largest operator by revenue – could wait until 2012 to deploy LTE technology as it plans to evolve its HSPA networks to HSPA+ technology in an effort to support ever faster download speeds. Unstrung, citing Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao’s comments in the company’s half-year conference call yesterday, reports that the operator is not expected to be a frontrunner in the move to ‘next-generation’ LTE technology. “It makes a lot of financial sense to continue to upgrade our network,” Unstrung quotes Colao as commenting. “I don’t see [LTE] as a huge revolution if you have a very good HSPA network… but [not before] back end of 2011, possibly 2012.” Colao even said that Vodafone’s HSPA network could support speeds up to 56Mb/s, although these speeds are theoretical peak figures and a long way off the average rates likely to be experienced. “We’re moving our network from 3 [Mb/s] to 7 [Mb/s], and from 7 to 21, then eventually 56Mb/s before the need for LTE,” added Colao.

Earlier this week the GSMA issued a statement noting that there are now 56 HSPA+ networks in existence globally, with 28 commercially live. Furthermore, the GSMA claimed that 50 mobile operators worldwide have already committed to LTE plans, trials or deployments, with the first LTE networks expected to be rolled out next year by the likes of Verizon, Docomo, MetroPCS and TeliaSonera. “There are several key questions operators need to address when building a business case for HSPA+ and/or LTE migration,” commented Dan Warren, director of technology at the GSMA. “The answers to these questions will determine whether or not they choose to deploy HSPA+ first or move straight to LTE.”