The world’s largest mobile service provider has chosen Alcatel-Lucent’s Chinese subsidiary to deploy the lion’s share of its TD-LTE network. China Mobile’s trial TD-LTE network will cover a total of 13 cities after completion of the rollout as well as other network upgrades.
Chinese carriers need to focus on LTE in order to keep up with Chinese consumers’ voracious appetite for LTE smartphones. China is now the world’s largest market for smartphones and for mobile data services.
“It is our honour to be selected by China Mobile for the world’s largest TD-LTE network,” said Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen. Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell will supply China Mobile with approximately 3,000 base stations in the cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Qingdao, where the carrier already has started to deploy LTE. As part of the rollout to ten more cities, Alcatel-Lucent is supplying China Mobile with radio access products, remote radio units and core networking equipment.
China Mobile currently has almost 700 million subscribers. China Unicom has 222 million and China Telecom has 146 million.
