Ericsson didn't estimate the number of North American LTE subscribers who are served by major U.S. carriers.

LTE networks remain only a tiny fraction of all wireless networks.

GSM 3G is still the largest wireless network globally, with nearly 5 billion mobile subscriptions.

In 2017, Ericsson says there will be approximately 1 billion LTE subscriptions worldwide, and 3 billion over GSM and 3 billion over Wideband CDMA/HSPA.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at , send e-mail to or subscribe to .