The general manager of China Mobile Research Institute, Huang Xiaoqing said that his company, with 611 million subscribers, has formed an alliance with 22 other companies including Britain’s Vodafone, Japan’s Softbank and Axiata, one of the leading companies in Asia.
This alliance was forged in Barcelona last February during the Mobile World Congress, said Huang, at which time seven companies joined the project, “TD-LTE Global Initiative”, which has installed pilot networks in 29 countries worldwide.
“Operators worldwide are looking for a single standardized protocol,” published today in reference to the TD-LTE, a standard that China Mobile and other operator allies are promoting, compared with FDD LTE Wimax in Europe and the United States.
China Mobile’s bid comes after its 3G technology that failed, unable to be applied to equipment such as iPhone, so users of the world’s largest operator can only use the Apple device on 2G networks.
The 4G technology will provide faster mobile broadband, and will take the “explosive demand for the coming years, which the current 3G system can not meet,” said Huang Xiaoqing.
The executive also said that TD-LTE network will be “ten times cheaper and will perform ten times better” than 3G.
According to a report by consultancy Goldman Sachs, China Mobile in China, Bharti in India and Softbank in Japan to launch 4G service in late 2012 or early 2013, covering 2,700 million people in three countries.