China Mobile plans to deploy 300,000 base stations next year, expand VoLTE, carrier aggregation
The world’s largest mobile operator China Mobile aims to reach 500 million LTE subscribers by the end of 2016, according to Chinese press reports.
China Mobile initially launched LTE services in December 2013, using spectrum in the 1900 MHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz bands. By the end of October, the operator had 267.3 million LTE subscribers, accounting for 32.4% of China Mobile’s overall mobile customer base.
According to the report, China Mobile also aims to increase the volume of handset sales in 2016 to nearly 330 million units, with 100 million supporting voice over LTE and carrier aggregation. China Mobile also said it plans to accelerate the commercialization of the two technologies.
According to China Mobile VP Li Huidi, the company sold more than 256 million LTE smartphones so far this year.
“Selling smartphones is a quite important way for China Mobile to acquire 4G users. We will continue our efforts in this direction next year,” the executive said.
The telco recently completed the deployment of more than 1 million LTE base stations across China. Plans for 2016 include the deployment of 300,000 additional base stations.
Indosat Ooredoo selects Nokia Networks for LTE-A deployment
In other APAC news, Indonesian mobile operator Indosat Oredoo selected Nokia Networks for the deployment of its LTE-Advanced network.
As part of the contract, Nokia Networks is currently deploying LTE base stations in cities across the Java, Kalimantan and Sumatra regions. Nokia Networks’ Global Services team has also aggregated two carriers in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz spectrum bands to deliver downlink speeds up to 150 megabits per second to Indosat’s subscribers in these three regions.
Under the contract, Nokia provided network planning and optimization, design and implementation services, as well as hardware services. The vendor also provided its Single RAN Advanced radio access solution, including Flexi Multiradio 10 base stations.
Indosat Ooredoo is part of the Ooredoo Group. The telco ended the third quarter of 2015 with 69 million mobile subscribers.
