China Looking to Speed up 4G Licensing

The Chinese government has revealed plans to speed up the 4G mobile license allocation process, with concessions now due to be awarded by the end of this year. An executive meeting of the State Council also discussed plans to accelerate fixed broadband deployments, plus moves which would encourage operators to upgrade the coverage and quality of their 3G wireless networks. The country’s leading cellular operator by subscribers, China Mobile, has already begun rolling out 4G networks based on time division duplex Long Term Evolution (TDD-LTE, or TD-LTE) technology, but there has been speculation that rival operators China Unicom and China Telecom could also adopt the frequency division duplex (FDD) LTE standard which is more popular in other markets worldwide. Last month, China Mobile opened a tender for the construction of 207,000 TD-LTE base stations in 31 provinces.