Corporate China | 4G TD-LTE's National Day arrival: cause for celebration?
TD-LTE 4G mobile service will get a chilly reception when it launches in October or November, but FDD licenses might not come until a year or more later
Mobile telecoms fans who have been waiting for years for China to issue 4G mobile licenses may finally have reason to celebrate, amid the latest media reports that say licenses will finally be awarded around the upcoming Oct 1 National Day holiday. But the awards will be somewhat bittersweet for true mobile fans, since only users of a homegrown technology called TD-LTE will be able to sample the super-high speeds offered by 4G for at least the next few months. People waiting for service based on more mature western-developed technology called FDD-LTE will probably have to wait at least another half year, and I wouldn't be surprised if the wait is even closer to a year or more.
In many ways, the period around Chinese National Day seems quite appropriate for the long-delayed release of China's first 4G mobile licenses in this kind of staggered approach. After all, the patriotic Oct 1 holiday, which celebrates the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, looks like a very suitable time to showcase such a nationally-developed technology like TD-LTE. In all fairness, China should be proud of developing such technology, even though its determination means that local consumers often have to suffer with inferior products to those used by western consumers.
The newest reports also confirm what many were already expecting, namely that all three of the country's wireless carriers will initially receive licenses that only allow them to offer 4G service over TD-LTE networks. Anyone who wants to offer service over a network using the globally developed FDD-LTE standard will have to apply separately for such a license. There's no indication of how long such an application will take to get approval, but I would suspect the MIIT won't be in any hurry to consider such applications.