An MVNO is a mobile operator that does not own its own spectrum and usually does not have its own network infrastructure.

The research firms said that on the technology side, the performance characteristics of 4G in terms of speed and latency and the lower cost per MB to deliver data over 4G networks make 4G technologies more viable than previous technologies. The desire to share the high costs of building a 4G network is also driving this market.

4G wholesale business will help to further widen the mobile device market, encompassing new and existing mobile devices, as well as play an important role for mobile CE devices, adds ABI Research.

While the market currently revolves entirely around WiMAX because of Clearwire and UQ Communications, the research firm believes that the market will shift rapidly to Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the next few years.

Aero2, Callmax, LightSquared, MVS, and Yota (Scartel) are other 4G wholesale operators that will have an impact with LTE, and many more are expected to sprout up.

While the market is forecasted to experience impressive growth globally, roughly one third of the anticipated 103 million 4G subscribers in 2016 will be from China and Japan. The US and Russia will also be influential countries contributing to 4G wholesale market growth.

Philip Solis, research director for mobile networks, said: “The 4G wholesale market will be one of the main catalysts in the mobile wireless market in the future. These forecasts are conservative, we believe, with mobile consumer electronics vendors’ adoption of this model being one factor that could greatly impact the potential of this market.”

Have your say and discuss with your peers on the InfoGrok community.