During the "PT/EXPO COMM CHINA 2014", the vice President of Datang Telecom Chen Shanzhi said in an interview with C114, although TD-LTE is still behind LTE FDD in the number of commercial networks, but in his opinion, it’s not enough to jusge whether 4G is mature or not by the number of networks or contracts, but more importantly by the total number of base stations and user scale. At present, TD-LTE subscribers worldwide have exceeded 42 million, and the number reaches 30 million in domestic.
In 2014, there will be 920,000 new LTE base stations built in the world, among which the TD-LTE base stations are 540,000, with a proportion of 60%. According to the plans in 2014 launched by the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI): TD-LTE base stations will exceed 800,000 in 2014, with a coverage of 3 billion population in the world, and will sell 150 million smart devices. This means that half of the global population will be in the coverage of TD-LTE network.
As the base of TD-LTE technology and industry, the current development of TD-LTE market in China is growing in its full swing.
The development of domestic TD-LTE subscribers has exceeded the industry expectations, and TD-LTE is in the key stage of expanding scale commercialization. Chen Shanzhi believes, "In the near future, when the number of TD-LTE subscribers accounts for 10% of the total subscribers, i.e., when the number of TD-LTE subscribers reaches 100 million, TD-LTE will embrace an development turning point in the history. A 100 million subscribers will make scale economic benefits for all the points of the industry chain, and it is of decisive significance for the explosive growth of subscribers and the coming benign cycle of the industry chain. The theory has been confirmed in the TD-SCDMA era."