Ericsson

LTE and video go hand in hand, as improved network speeds will help drive 60 percent annual growth in video traffic on mobile networks through 2018, according to the latest edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report. Further, the vendor expects overall data traffic will grow 12-fold by the end of 2018.

Vodafone and China Mobile said they had withdrawn from the process to award two telecoms licences in Myanmar, although the operators have not ruled out a participation in future opportunities in the country.

Microsoft received one more bit of good press out of Mediaroom before finally selling the IPTV platform to Ericsson. According to research developed by Multimedia Research Group's (MRG's) IPTV Market Leader Report, 2013, Microsoft "leads the world in two of six IPTV market categories" the researchers tracked.

Ericsson said there are now more than 1 billion subscribers on networks for which it provides managed services, a milestone it crossed sometime in the first quarter. The company said the market represents not only a significant achievement for itself but also for the wider industry as vendors change the nature of how they work with carriers.

Separate announcements from major infrastructure vendors Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks highlight the growing importance of carrier-grade Wi-Fi and intelligent traffic steering connectivity between cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

The United States already accounts for nearly half of all LTE subscriptions worldwide, and LTE rollouts are trickling down from the largest U.S. mobile operators to some of the smallest.