China Telecom and China Unicom will receive licences that will enable them to offer full 4G services in the next couple of days, it emerged on Tuesday.
The two operators are likely to be granted licences to roll out the FDD variant of LTE on Thursday, the Shanghai Daily reported, without citing its sources.
The move will enable the pair to compete more effectively with market leader China Mobile, which launched its 4G service just over a year ago. By the end of 2014 it had signed up 90.06 million customers and has reportedly exceeded the 100 million mark since then.
China Mobile’s 4G service is based on China’s homegrown TD-LTE standard. China Telecom and China Unicom have been waiting for FDD LTE licences to enable them to offer full, smartphone-based 4G services of their own.
The operators were given permits to roll out trial hybrid TDD/FDD LTE networks in 16 cities in June and by the end of the year they were able to offer services in 56 cities.
The lack of a full 4G service has been particularly damaging to China Telecom, which saw its customer base decline by more than 5 million over the first seven months of 2014. The trial licence helped it to turn the tide though and for 2014 as a whole the telco posted subscriber growth of around 400,000 to 185.6 million.
It doubtless hopes a full 4G service will bring stronger growth to its customer base in 2015.
China Mobile, meanwhile, aims to add 250 million 4G customers in 2015, more than doubling its current base, the Shanghai Daily said.
The paper reported that the telco had more than 100 million 4G customers at the end of January and 700,000 base stations. It will add another 300,000 base stations this year, as well as bringing out a broader range of low-cost 4G handsets.
China Mobile and China Telecom are due to publish their January customer numbers on Wednesday.
