By: Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Contributor

Even connectivity-challenged Laos advertises 4G LTE wireless connectivity. Albeit coverage is limited and not all 4G LTE networks have been created equal. Reality is that you’ll be hard-pressed to find 4G LTE even in the heart of Laos’ capital, Vientiane. And, despite global industry and government enthusiasm for 4G LTE, many other parts of the globe are still achingly slow with their 4G rollouts. However, not every country has poor 4G LTE coverage. In fact, five 4G standouts include France, Spain, China, Dubai, and of course the U.S.

Orange France is doing it right when it comes to 4G LTE, and has deployed it extensively with 70 percent of the French population now having access. The operator deployed LTE in different bands and both TDD and FDD modes plus CA to improve capacity and coverage while also simplifying things with a self-organized network, according to a recent  TechZine blog post, 4G LTE destinations for the connected traveler, by David Swift, Marketing Director, Alcatel Lucent. 

Spain too has robust 4G LTE deployment as Telefonica Spain is leveraging LTE’s speed and reliability for next-generation multimedia services in the hotly contested Spanish mobile market.  LTE has given Telefonica an early edge. 4G LTE overlay was the operator’s approach.  Users can take advantage of its speeds without Telefonica having to skimp on its 2G/3G infrastructure. In addition, as Swift points out, Telefonica Spain is ready for their network’s evolution to vRAN and LTE Advanced, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

Let us not forget China, the biggest and fastest growing mobile market in the world. China Mobile invested \$7 billion in its network in 2014, and is deploying a TD-LTE HetNet and adding metro cells to address hotspot issues. In fact, China Mobile now claims it has the world’s biggest end-to-end TD-LTE HetNet, and it has established an LTE TDD ecosystem and is ready for network functions virtualization (NFV) and cloud-based services.

In the Middle East, Dubai has become a 4G LTE leader. Etisalat, a mobile provider in Dubai, covers 85 percent of populated areas and has also addressed the issue of massive smartphone penetration and demand for massive capacity. They use carrier aggregation (CA) to maximize spectrum and boost capacity and speed. According to Alcatel-Lucent, their network claims mobile broadband speeds up to 300Mbps.

And then there is the U.S. In the U.S., AT&T also is utilizing CA effectively. With a user based of around 300 million, AT&T has to handle both volume and customers who expect a superior quality of experience. To achieve this, AT&T has deployed LTE backed up by CA—and it also uses small cells to boost LTE coverage in dense, high-traffic environments.

Laos telecoms could learn a thing or two from these mobile operators, and as Alcatel-Lucent highlights, it could use their LTE Express solutions to deploy 4G LTE quickly.