In a recently held industry conference, China Mobile vice president Li Zhengmao said, China Mobile is actively seeking integration of networking in LTE technology.
"From China Mobile's point of view, we have always supported integration of networking, and each operator has the right to choose pure FDD or pure TDD network; but if you want to support both FDD and TDD frequencies, the only correct choice is the integration of networking." Li Zhengmao said.
"In the 2G network, we still have some FDD frequencies, along with the gradually withdraw of 2G network from the market, it must be carefully planned how to put these frequency spectrums into use again." Industrial insiders point out, China Mobile apparently hopes that the government be considerate as early as possible, and release more LTE FDD frequency spectrums with the refarming of 2G GSM network, and lay the foundation for the real integration of LTE networking.
Although the government allows the sharing between 4G and 3G frequencies, and no longer distinguish the frequencies in 3G and 4G network, but the 2G frequency was not mentioned. As we all know, with the rapid growth of 3G/4G subscribers, 2G subscribers are constantly decreasing, which results in the rapid decline of the utilization of 2G network; especially after the completion of the VoLTE, the value of GSM network will further shrink, so we should find another application for this valuable frequency.
Insiders point out, through the benchmarking integration of networking, China Mobile can take full advantage of the industrial scale in LTE, and get rid of the embarrassment in a niche market in 3G era. In addition to the considerations of industrial chain robustness, this is also an investment to the future market, because with the continues expand of LTE deployment, the signal coverage will become a big problem, it will greatly increase the operation cost even with the 900MHz frequency in 4G network coverage, let alone the 2.6GHz.
An expert of China Mobile Group Design Institute Co., Ltd. had pointed out, a 900MHz GSM base station can cover 3 to 4 villages in average in the rural areas, but it is absolutely impossible with the LTE network. "In the 2G network, it doesn't matter with the distance to the base station when making a call in the village; but in the 4G network, the network you use to surf the Internet is related with the carrier wave ratio, the base station must be set in the most appropriate location. If you want to reach the coverage level of GSM network, and also guarantee the experience of cell edge users, a big adjustment to the network will be required. Basically every village will need a base station, which makes much more increase in the total number."