China Mobile, operator of the world’s biggest TD-LTE network, has applied for an FDD-LTE licence, it emerged on Tuesday.
According to a report by C114, China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua insisted he has confidence in TD-LTE technology, which has enabled his com pany to go from a standing start in December 2013 to 106.8 million 4G customers at the end of January 2015.
In particular, Guohua attributed the popularity of China Mobile’s 4G service to the widespread availability of affordable devices. Of the 1,000 compatible 4G products on offer, 60% are priced at around 1,000 yuan (€150), "which is good for our popularisation and promotion," he said in the report.
Nonetheless, C114 reports that China Mobile has applied to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) for an FDD licence.
Guohua said the telco aims to carry out interoperability trials between the FDD and TDD variants of LTE so that if it runs out of TDD spectrum, "we can also use FDD spectrum." He also claimed that "other countries could use this [hybrid] technology more boldly" if China Mobile’s trials prove successful.
Meanwhile, in late February, the MIIT formally issued China Mobile’s rivals, China Telecom and China Unicom, with full FDD LTE licences, enabling them to roll out hybrid FDD/TDD networks. They had until then been limited to trial licences covering major cities.
