China has awarded TDD spectrum for LTE to all three mobile operators, and while the wireless suppliers, in particular, seem to have been waiting for this moment for aeons, in fact it is well ahead of schedule and indicates the importance of 4G to the country’s ongoing economic transformation ‘ to bring broadband services to more inhabitants and businesses, and to kickstart a global TD-LTE ecosystem which Chinese companies shape and dominate.
At one time, China’s MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information) hinted it might delay new spectrum allocations until 2015 to allow the cellcos to maximize returns on their 3G investments first. China Mobile, stuck with the least attractive 3G platform ‘ the homegrown and isolated TD-SCDMA, with its shortage of devices and performance gaps ‘ lobbied against this view, seeing its smaller rivals, China Unicom and China Telecom, already closing on it in terms of 3G uptake.
The largest carrier embarked on an ambitious series of TD-LTE roll-outs ‘ trials in name but supporting wide-scale coverage and full services ‘ designed to instil confidence in the technology and attract ecosystem support, in effect promoting it to almost-equal partnership with its better established FDD cousin.
In a final effort to swing the balance of power back in its own direction, Mobile also lobbied for Unicom and Telecom, which have their 3G networks in FDD spectrum, to be given TDD frequencies for 4G. Although they will get FDD-LTE allocations in future, for now they have a dilemma ‘ to move quickly to LTE and keep up with Mobile, they will need to invest in an unfamiliar technology and in multimode devices; to keep everything in paired spectrum, they will need to stick to 3G for mobile broadband services, perhaps for 2-3 more years. Of course, it is getting increasingly practical to combine 3G, FD-LTE and TD-LTE, with vendors gathering around the likes of Softbank and Sprint, but it will still increase the time-to-market gap between the Chinese players.
In other words, the largest cellco has played a blinder here and will now be able to expand its own roll-outs, and its 4G headstart over its competitors. It has already been overlaying LTE on existing TD-SCDMA sites and will now have new spectrum capacity, as well as, it is assumed, winning the 4G operating licence to accompany the frequencies ‘ which will let it switch its existing trial systems to full commercial status.
Xie Feibo, director of the MIIT’s radio regulatory bureau, announced the spectrum awards at the ITU Telecom World event in Thailand on Tuesday. He said the government had allocated 130MHz of unpaired spectrum to China Mobile, in the 1880-1900MHz, 2320-2370MHz, and 2575-2635MHz bands. These are officially for TD-LTE trials but an operating concession is expected to be awarded later this month.
Meanwhile, China Unicom and China Telecom received 40MHz each of TDD spectrum, the former in the 2300-2320MHz and 2555-2575MHz bands and the latter in the 2370-2390MHz and 2635-2655MHz frequencies. FDD allocations will be considered in future, and the government is also considering expanding TDD capacity further by opening up the 1.4GHz and 3.5GHz bands. Further ahead, it is involved in ‘5G’ R&D projects, which focus heavily on very high frequencies to boost capacity ‘ Xie said the ministry was exploring the application of 50GHz and above for mobile broadband.
China Mobile’s CEO Li Yue also outlined some of the carrier’s 4G progress at the ITU event, including trials of carrier aggregation within the LTE-Advanced standards, VoLTE, and dual-mode FDD/TDD networks (it already has such a system running in Hong Kong). The operator has so far built out 200,000 TD-LTE or 3G/4G base stations across the country and bought about one million TD-LTE devices, but it is still working with partners to drive down handset costs and so boost uptake once the networks are fully commercial. He said a CNY1,000 ($744) smartphone for LTE would be introduced this year and would be a mainstream option by the second half of next year, but of course, mass adoption will rely on driving TD-LTE phone costs down a great deal further than that.