German mobile operator E-Plus is to undertake a trial of TD-LTE technology, supported by the world’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile. Chinese vendor ZTE will supply the infrastructure for the trial, which will use 2.6GHz spectrum acquired by E-Plus in spectrum auctions that concluded in May 2010.

“This trial will not only demonstrate the latest progress of TD-LTE/LTE FDD convergence in standards and industry development, but will also lay excellent ground for the full commercialisation of TD-LTE,” said ZTE in a statement.

TD-LTE was one of the big LTE stories in 2010, moving from what looked like a fairly niche proposition at the beginning of the year to a strong one as it drew to a close. Like TD-SCDMA before it, TD-LTE was thought likely at one stage to be restricted primarily to China. But, according to Thorsten Robrecht, head of LTE Radio Access Product Management at Nokia Siemens Networks, it emerged last year as a solution with a far wider range of potential applications. “TD-LTE is really a global LTE solution, I’m very sure about this,” Robrecht told Telecoms.com. “It has evolved so much over recent months and now I’m seeing it appearing in all sorts of countries.”

While the standard has been incubated in China, Robrecht said, the earliest deployments are more likely to come from elsewhere. He flagged significant activity in Japan as well as India and Russia and even customers considering it in Australia. Nonetheless TD-LTE will lag its FDD sibling and all of the deployments so far—as well as the ones that are imminent—are in paired spectrum.

The seventh annual LTE World Summit takes place in Amsterdam on 17th – 18th May.

www.lteconference.com