As related by others, LTE has a less complicated backhaul network than the 3G networks (My experience is with WCDMA and WiMAX). Part of this is that 3G networks

As related by others, LTE has a less complicated backhaul network than the 3G networks (My experience is with WCDMA and WiMAX). Part of this is that 3G networks generally consist of several "servers" (in an as abstract sense as possible") and LTE significantly reduces this number. Another significant factor is that LTE does not do circuit switched data/voice data and is exclusively packet switched and IP based. Of course, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) augments this slightly, but the general case is still true. And in addition to this: going from microphone to speaker is much more than just the network. Digital coding of voice data, as an example, has been intensively researched and every single bit is squeezed to out to improve network capacity. They do source coding, to model the human voice and then apply to prediction algorithms to further reduce the bit rate. Recently, I heard a figure of 6.7 kb/s for voice data. A good book, for the introduction on mobile networks almost literally from microphone to the entire network is From GSM to LTE-Advanced: http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118861957.html http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118861957...