China Mobile to operate TDD and FDD LTE in tandem CEO reveals

China Mobile will not stick exclusively to TDD LTE but will operate a FDD LTE network at the same time, CEO Li Yue  revealed at a 4G conference held in Taipei last week. The dual path technology strategy will be taken to encourage the take up of dual-mode, multi-band devices around the world, he said.

China Mobile has been widely testing TD-LTE based networks and is running trials on over 20,000 base stations across ten major cities, which is set to be expanded to 100 cities through 2013, thus covering up to 35 per cent of the population using 200,000 base stations.

According to Digitimes, the operator set up a dual TD/FDD network in Hong Kong in December 2012 using frequency bands of 2330-2360MHz for TD-LTE, with 2555-2570MHz and 2675-2690MHz used for FDD-LTE operation.

As the world’s largest operator, with over 722 million subscribers according to Informa WCIS stats, China Mobile is seen by many as crucial to the success of rolling out TD-LTE networks.

Malaysian operator P1 is currently in the process of rolling out TD-LTE in its market and in a recent interview with Telecoms.com, its CEO Michael Lai said that, “The economies of scale will definitely depend on the movement of the biggest guys such as China Mobile.”

The inaugural TD-LTE Summit is taking place on the 23^rd-24^th April 2013 at the Fairmont Singapore Hotel, Singapore. Click here to download a flyer.