China Mobile, the world’s largest operator by customer numbers and market value, plans to run TD-LTE trials in as many as half a dozen cities.
Equipment for what would be the world’s first metro TD-LTE trials is in place and the company is waiting for approval by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), chairman Wang Jianzhou was quoted saying by the Economic Daily.
The operator has a TD-LTE trial network for the past six months at the Shanghai Expo, which closed last week.
Wang said TD-LTE had progressed faster than expected, mainly because of the massive growth in data services in China, and the fast take-up of smartphones.
He said “many foreign operators” were interested in the trials, which would take place in three to six cities.
The operator has deployed 3,000 base stations in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shenzhen and Xiamen, ccidcom.com reported.
But chip development was the weakest link in the TD-LTE value chain, and the government also needed to offer incentives to handset manufacturers, an analyst, He Tingrun, said.
The government-owned research institute CATR last month began testing 2.6GHz TD-LTE chips, CCID said.