In a recent report, it was revealed that Indian mobile service providers – Airtel and Reliance Jio – are working on next step of simple LTE – LTE-A and LTE-U – respectively. LTE-A (LTE Advanced) is more about carrier aggregation, which means adding different types of spectrum bands for one pipe i.e. more bandwidth.
On the other hand, LTE-U (LTE Unlicensed) is more likely to be the next step forward after LTE-A. It was originally proposed by Qualcomm for using LTE technology in the unlicensed spectrum (5GHz for example).
Ericsson also uses the term License Assisted Access (LAA) to describe a similar technology.
