According to information sources, the Ministry has officially released the 4G licenses to three operators this afternoon, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom all have received TD-LTE license.
Mainland official release 4G licenses, meaning that after the 3G launched to commercial for nearly five years, three domestic telecom operators finally granted a 4G license to get a start qualification 4G commercial, the three operators will be able to achieve 4G business commercial in Mainland justifiably. These operators will thus speed up the pace of deploying 4G-related work.
In fact, before this, the three operators have invested varying degrees of resources in 4G areas. China Mobile has taken the lead in a number of cities, such as Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Beijing etc…And some of them had launched a commercial trial 4G services. It is understood that China Mobile’s next plan will expanded the cities of TD-LTE network coverage to 300 or more cities.
While China Telecom recently launched preparatory work on 4G terminal, and issued a demand books of the terminal part to the 4G mobile phone manufacturers. At present, China Telecom has completed the first LTE network equipment tender, to build a 4G Network with FDD base stations accounted 70%, TDD base stations accounted for 30%.
China Unicom launched the first LTE equipment bidding at the end of October this year, totally Purchasing 52,000 LTE base stations, including 10000 TD-LTE base stations, 34000 FDD-LTE base stations, 8000 FDD-LTE indoor stations. Meanwhile, China Unicom has a comprehensive upgrade its 3G network downlink speeds to HSPA+ 42Mbps.
It’s generally believed that the competitive landscape of the three operators in 3G era will probably be broken in the upcoming 4G era. After 4G license released, the three operators stand on the same starting line again. It says that, 4G market will be a bigger cake, the three operators who can seize the best market opportunities in the new competition, will be able to benefit from them.
In addition, after the 4G license issuance, the investment will therefore be accelerated in the entire telecommunications industry and the mobile Internet industry. Followed 4G licenses issued, mobile Internet field may also be spawned a new round of start-ups, such as high-definition video conferencing, mobile gaming, 3D navigation applications suitable for broadband mobile networks under large data will also become a reality.
However, for the majority of consumers, the 4G licensing of commercial is not equivalent to real arrival of 4G eras. It must go through a maturation process, among which there are many problems to be solved. For example, the depth of coverage of the network, the popularity and decline cost of 4G terminal, down 4G tariffs and so on.