Vendors focus on TD-LTE for China

With equipment spending by Chinese mobile operators estimated to hit $41bn over the next two years, vendors are falling over themselves to accommodate the country’s nascent technology initiatives.

On Wednesday, Nokia Siemens Networks became the latest vendor to throw its weight behind TD-LTE, the Time Division flavour of the next generation wireless platform based on LTE.

Following the successful lab demonstrations conducted with operators in Germany last year, NSN has expanded its team in Hangzhou, China, to support the commercial roll out of TD-LTE.

China was always the most likely scenario for deployment of TD-LTE, where it is backwards compatible with China’s own homegrown 3G technology, TD-SCDMA.

Last month, Motorola announced plans to collaborate with operators on TD-LTE trials during 2009. Moto supports both TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, and said it is planning an LTE ecosystem to support the early deployments from the fourth quarter of 2009 to mid-2010.

NSN has already cleaned up a decent portion of the investment funds currently available in the Chinese market, racking up framework agreements valued at RMB7.6bn (Eur880m) from China Mobile and China Unicom, to purchase 2G and 3G mobile equipment and services during 2009.

Under the framework agreements NSN will roll out WCDMA networks for China Unicom in 11 provinces across China, and will provide China Mobile with TD-SCDMA and GSM networks.