The deputy general manager of China Telecom Technology Department Shen Shaoai said on the recently held "China Telecom Mobile Terminal Technology Forum", at present, China Telecom has built the world's largest FDD-LTE network. By the end of 2015, China Telecom will build a total of over 460,000 LTE base stations, making the national 4G coverage rate reaching 95%.
When talking about the future technology development of 4G network, she said that China Telecom's “4G target network” was composed of three layers of networking: the wide coverage layer, the gold capacity layer and the hotspot offloading layer.
Of the three layers, the wide coverage layer is responsible for the basic voice and traffic data services. It will use the 850MHz frequency band and the 700MHz frequency band (if it can be obtained in the future) for coverage. Due to carrying voice services, the VoLTE and VoWiFi technologies would be involved.
The gold capacity layer will be used for core carrying: it adopts the 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz and 800MHz frequency bands in the networking, namely the 1.8GHz and 2.1GHz frequency bands can be used separately, and dual carrier of 1.8GHz and 2.1GHz frequency bands or tri-carrier of 1.8GHz, 2.1GHz and 800MHz frequency bands can also be achieved through the CA (carrier aggregation) technology.
The hotspot offloading layer is positioned on providing the ultimate experience. It will include the 2.6GHz TDD network that China Telecom has obtained, as well as the carrier aggregation of TDD and FDD networks, it will also use the 3.5GHz high frequency band for traffic data offloading in the future.