On the Nanjing Tianyi Handset Fair that held at the end of June, China Telecom and China Unicom obtained the qualification to develop TD-LTE and LTE FDD trial integration of networking in 16 cities.
According to C114, during the TD-LTE and LTE FDD trial integration of networking, the test content of China Unicom includes interoperability of the network, the experience of users when they switch the network with devices that support LTE TDD and FDD modes, the peak rate, the difference of the coverage abilities, including the carrying capacity of the single network, and how much the network speed can achieve in different edges.
According to C114, the 4G integration of networking in China Telecom is similar to that in China Unicom, which mainly focused on FDD, supplemented with TDD, and TDD is used as the carrying basis and the underlying coverage. An unnamed industry source said, this is because FDD has comparative advantages in wide coverage capacity and spectral efficiency, so FDD accounted for the bulk portion in the early construction stage, and TDD is located in the hotspot absorption to improve the peak rate and the utilization rate of regional spectrum in the integration of networking. The 4G trial integration of networking in China Unicom adopts 10M 1.8GHz spectrum.
The source also added that, although currently the construction of 4G network are dominated by FDD in both China Unicom and China Telecom, the FDD spectrum resources are very limited, China Unicom has 10M spectrum and China Telecom has 15M, although the telecom operators can also utilize the 1800MHz spectrum of the 2G network jointly, but in any case, from the development trend of network and the increase of subscribers in the future, the 1.8G frequency band is not enough to carry the increasing subscribers in the long run. In the future, China Unicom and China Telecom will definitely face LTE multi-carriers aggregation, and integration of networking with cross network systems.
Other media report that, the number of 4G trial networks of China Telecom will be expanded to 50 cities in September, although China Unicom hasn’t releases its latest development situation, but according to the source, most of the prefecture cities are in the construction of FDD trial network, but with different scales.
In the first batch of pilot cities that were allowed to develop trail integration of TD LTE and LTE FDD network, most of them have completed the coverage of main urban area, the highest speed of the network can reach 150Mbps, after the aggregation of TDD carrier, the highest speed can reach 250Mbps.