Guo Hucheng, Minister of Commerce of the People's Republic of China declared on October 10 that the Chinese 3G and 4G Subscriber base will break 500 million mark and consolidated sales of smartphones and tablets will reach about 524 million units two years from now, the Beijing Times reported on December 10, 2013.
Looking at the development of major telecom operators in 4G, China Telecom has launched its 4G brand and logo, e-surfing - the same logo the company used for its 3G brand - in its attempt to offer LTE experience to the public in some cities beginning in January next year. It is learnt that 4G licenses currently released by China's MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) are TD-LTE (Time Division-Long Term Evolution) version of 4G rather than FDD- LTE (Frequency Division Duplex-Long Term Evolution), current 4G standard around the world.
Meanwhile, Beijing Mobile, China Mobile's subsidiary in Beijing, conducted a 4G field-test using a 4G smartphone. In the 10 Mbps bandwidth environment, the result showed that the 4G gadget has a peak download speed of 106 Mbps, with typical download speeds between 70 and 80 Mbps. On the contrary, the smartphone running on Wi-Fi (Wireless-Fidelity) has a download speed of merely 13 Mbps.