The telecoms service provider has received approvals from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to further expand the trial to reach 15 additional markets. Earlier this year, it received the go-ahead to commence trials in 41 cities within the mainland.
The 15 additional cities include Shaoxing, Taizhou, Changzhou, Xuzhou, Yangzhou, Yancheng, Qingdao, Tangshan, Baoding, Dalian, Zhongshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Wuhu and Yulin.
The move will position China Telecom and China Unicom on a more level playing field with rival China Mobile, which by the end of September already had 50 million 4G connections.
In September, China Telecom entered into a partnership with Nokia Networks to develop FDD-TDD carrier aggregation and user device chipset capabilities. China Telecom will be able to use the service to improve LTE coverage and improve throughput capacity.
In addition to enhancing the coverage for LTE users in areas where both variants of LTE are deployed, the successful trial will be tailored towards commercial adoption of carrier aggregation to improve LTE network speeds.
