China's telecom regulators MIIT has formally issue FDD LTE trial network licenses to China Unicom and China Telecom this afternoon, allowing them to carry out trial integration of networking of FDD LTE and TD-LTE in 16 key mainland cities. As the earlier rumors,China Mobile doesn't get the FDD LTE trial license.
This means that, China Unicom and China Telecom will be allowed to conduct scale development and construction of FDD LTE network in the 16 cities permitted and 4G network performance of the two operators will be improved significantly.
In addition, as the 4G commercial service based on FDD LTE has been launched for many years in foreign countries, and the available devices are relatively mature, so once China Unicom and China Telecom obtain the FDD LTE trial network licenses, they are able to provide 4G FDD LTE devices in the market right away.
After the licensing, China Telecom launch its 4G Plan immediately, the cheapest option is CNY 49 per month including 2GB data traffic.