Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell will extend services to 10 cities across China, and after upgrades to three existing networks, the latest trial TD-LTE network will cover an additional three cities to total 13.
Terms of the contract include the delivery of approximately 3,000 base stations in the cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao, the three major economic hubs of China. It is expected the network extension will occur early next year.
China Mobile has over 700 million subscribers, and is fast tracking its TD-LTE deployment to match smartphone demand in China. 22% of global smartphone shipments went to China in Q1 2012, making it the largest smartphone market in the world.
High bandwidth applications, including gaming and video, are fuelling demand for Chinese consumers, with mobile data services also increasing at a rate of 50% each year.
“It is our honour to be selected by China Mobile for the world’s largest TD-LTE network,” said Ben Verwaayen, CEO at Alcatel-Lucent. “With our industry-leading LTE solutions and expertise in deploying LTE networks worldwide, we will help China Mobile dramatically reduce technical complexity, power consumption and operating costs in the face of sharp traffic growth.”
Both companies initiated a trial of TD-LTE technology and signed an agreement in Shanghai last year. The partnership has extended to developing and testing a series of lightRadio technology elements and in August, they signed an MoU to conduct joint nanocell research in China.
