- In the wake of the announcement made by ASB (Alcatel Lucent Shanghai Bell) earlier that the company was selected as one of telecom equipment providers for China Mobile's TD-LTE (Time Division-Long Term Evolution) demonstration network in Shanghai, it is learnt that China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) also issued network access licenses to another four telecom equipment suppliers, including Huawei, ZTE, Datang Telecom, and Nokia Siemens, and two chipmakers, namely Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Technologies, and Bejing-based Innofidei, the China Business News reported on March 28. Pursuant to their respective agreements with China Mobile, ASB will provide equipment in Shanghai, Huawei in Shenzhen, ZTE in Guangzhou, Datang Telecom in Nanjing, and Nokia Siemens in Hangzhou, according to the same source. Ericsson, Motorola, and the other four companies reportedly were not being selected during the first-round of evaluation.
Other than the abovementioned five cities, China Mobile is also projected to conduct a large-scale demonstration network trial in Xiamen and Motorola is likely to be selected. ASB stated that the large-scale network demonstration will continue for around half a year. China Mobile is projected to begin commercialization of TD-LTE networks in seven cities by the second quarter of 2012. To date, more than 1,000 TD-LTE base stations are currently being installed, according to Sina Tech News on March 31.
- Guangdong Telecom, a subsidiary of China Telecom in Guangdong, recently revealed that the company is able to embedded phone numbers onto the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) iPhone 4, leveraging the OTA (Over-The-Air) technology, the Guangzhou Daily reported on March 30. To access mobile services provided by China Telecom, grey-market iPhone 4 users only need to input their mobile phone number and password to embed the number onto their existing mobile phone. This embedded process is, however, still pending approval by China's MIIT and the embedded equipment is expected to cost a couple of million RMB, thereby increasing the entry barriers, according to the same source. China Telecom stated that so far the company has already had a set of CDMA iPhone 4 models, to be used for interoperability tests with China Telecom's services and applications. Nevertheless, the OTA technology is reportedly still confined to laboratories and is yet to have any large-scale deployment plan based on the said technology.
Aside from Guangdong Telecom, China Telecom currently has 7 to 8 provincial-level subsidiaries with OTA capabilities. Should China Telecom and Apple reach an agreement to sell the iPhone 4 in China, along with the approval by China's MIIT, China Telecom will only require upgrading its existing mobile phone base stations and its 7 to 8 provincial subsidiaries and will be able to begin to incorporate OTA capabilities onto the grey-market iPhone 4.
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