China approves wide-scale TD-LTE network trials

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has given the go-ahead for China Mobile to begin large-scale trials of TD-LTE  networks in six cities, according to a report in the Chinese publication People's Daily Online.

The report said that networks will be constructed in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou in eastern China; Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south and Siamen in the southeast. The trials are commission by MIIT, and China Mobile will be in charge of constructing, operating and maintaining the the networks. Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Datang Telecom Technology & Industry, ZTE and Huawei are the vendors involved in the trials.

China Mobile has been an aggressive advocate of TD-LTE, and is eager to roll out the technology, which would be backward compatible to the struggling Chinese 3G standard TD-SCDMA. Given China Mobile's eagerness to push the technology along, industry watchers believe TD-LTE will make its commercial entrance by mid-2011. Qualcomm and other silicon vendors are focusing on the standard, which operates in Time Division Duplex (TDD) spectrum, the same type of spectrum WiMAX operates in.

For more:
- see this Digitimes article

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