- Following the earlier news that five companies were rewarded network access licenses issued by China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) following the completion of field tests based on TD-LTE (TD-Long Term Evolution), a TDD (Time Division Duplex) version of LTE, Ericsson, Motorola, Potevio, New Postcom, FiberHome, and Samsung also followed suits to obtain such licenses, the Sina News reported on May 5. It is learnt that TD-LTE testing program is divided into three phases, the first is the proof of concept phase, second the R&D experimental phase, and the third the pilot-scale testing phase. A total of 11 international and Chinese TD-LTE equipment suppliers completed the second two phases and will separately participate in the pilot-scale testing phase while jointly building 1,210 base stations, 1,100 of which will be macro stations and 110 will be micro stations, according to the same source.
- China Unicom recently has begun upgrading its mobile network from GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) to 2.75G or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), a system built on top of GSM system, Guangdong Unicom, a subsidiary of China Unicom in Guangdong, revealed that the company recently launched a mobile service, thereby allowing users to enjoy a data transmission speed of 384 kbits/second, which is three to four times faster than that provided by GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) phones, by means of WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) phones with correct 3G online settings. Meanwhile, Shanghai Unicom, a subsidiary of China Unicom in Shanghai, announced on May 3 that by year-end 2010, the company had a total of around six million subscribers with broadband access capacity. Of the total broadband users, 98.58% of which had 2Mbps broadband access capacity, over 85% of which had 4Mbps, and 35% of which had 20Mbps. In additional, the number of 3G base stations deployed by Beijing Unicom totaled 11,000 units by year-end 2010, with 3G network coverage hitting over 99%, the Sohu IT News reported on May 3.