By Huang Xin

TD-LTE-Advanced dominated by China was formally identified as one of the two international standards of the fourth-generation mobile communication by International Telecommunication Union in January this year. It started the high-speed era of mobile communication and was expanded rapidly in the whole world. The scale test conducted in 6 cities last year in China made a positive achievement and pilot cities will be further increased this year.

"It still needs 2 or 3 years to issue a 4G license. We would rather slow down to be well-prepared for the purpose that finally users can receive a mature and high-quality product", Miao Yu, minister of Industry and Information Technology. It needs to solve two problems of base station density and immature terminal for the commercialization of TD-LTE. Currently, there are 220,000 base stations for TD-SCDMA network and we will strive for increasing the number of base stations to 400,000 within 3 years so as to step to 4G.
What is 4G?

After 3G license was issued by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2008, TD-SCDMA began to commercially operate formally. TD-LTE, as a subsequent evolution of TD-SCDMA, possesses characteristics of more advanced technology, higher transmission rate and more economical frequency utilization. The industry terms this evolution as 4G.

Such an evolution is also reflected in the upgrading method from 3G to 4G. It is said that the existing 3G mobile base station can be smoothly transformed to a 4G one through simple equipment upgrading and the users feel nothing during the process of upgrading.

For average users, what is most obvious is that 4G is faster than 3G. During the TD-LTE network test in a bus in Hangzhou, the network speed can reach 80M per second, dozens of times of the current 3G speed. Time delay is significantly improved compared to that in 3G. Under a static state, the downloading speed of TD-LTE is as high as 100M per second, exceeding the speed of normal broadband of traditional fixed network, so as to really solve the trouble of cable and go on line at any time and any site in any way.

4G brings a quicker network speed with usability no worse than the one of 3G and service charge expected to be no more than that of 3G. People do not need to replace the mobile phones with different standards. With additional devices like network converter, you can convert 4G signal into WIFI to receive. And you can convert and receive it through special devices if in the public area or at home. It is said that the charge policy for TD-LTE is not yet formulated.

Just for this, Li Yue, president of China Mobile, says the "TD-LTE" standard created by China will occupy 30 percent share of the global market in 10 years.

What does 4G do?

Passengers in Bus B1 in Hangzhou always use intelligent terminals like smart phones and netbooks to enjoy the high speed surfing on the internet.

Quicker 4G speed makes the high-speed information service applications which are restricted due to low network speed possible, such as simultaneous shooting and transmission of high-resolution video, high-resolution VOD and high-resolution video meeting.

The development of 4G also means a huge market cake. "Once 4G is commercialized in a large scale, it will not only advance the development of communication equipment industry, but also drive forward the related industries in the whole chain, such as network operation, mobile internet, content, service application, etc.", said Chen Shanzhi, vice chairman of Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group. "As for China, 4G will form a market scale over RMB 1000 billion Yuan during its whole life time".

Earlier during the network construction in 3G era, Chinese domestic manufacturers benefit a lot, and it will be the same in 4G era. As for RAN1 and RAN4 related with the core physical technologies of 4G, the number of papers submitted by Datang Telecom leads the whole industry that allow Datang Telecom situate at a core position in the field of TDD 4G standard. To the end of December, 2011, ZTE (Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment) has acquired 30 LTE commercial contracts and 6 formal commercial networks and cooperated with over 100 operators all over the world to deploy pilot networks. Such a situation is obviously better than that during 2G and 3G era. The number of basic 4G LTE patents of ZTE has accounted for 7 percent of that of the global communication manufacturers and marched into the leading group of 4G standard.

How far is 4G away?

"Presently, the global end-to-end industrial chain of TD-LTE has been completed. This year, China will further expand the construction, increase the number of pilot cities, strengthen the improvement, enhance user experience, provide large-volume and high-speed LT-LTE network service and appeal for cooperation of the global industrial chain so as to promote the formation of the scale effect globally", said Sha Nansheng, deputy director of Science and Technology Division of MIIT.

It is said that the TD-LTE industrial chain has be recognized and adopted by many domestic and foreign leading operators like China Mobile, Japanese Softbank, Vodafone and Deutsche Telecom. It is expected that more than 10 countries and regions will begin to the process of commercial deployment in 2012 and a several operators has started the pre-commercial network deployment.

China Telecom and China Unicom view that the 4G development is still faced with the problems of technical bottlenecks and deficiency of market demand that needs time to be commercialized in a large scale, but China Mobile has went ahead and is making efforts to realize it.

The TD-LTE scale technical test of China Mobile has entered the second phase in February this year. China Mobile started the TD-LTE scale technical test in 6 cities including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Xiamen two years ago. To September last year, the work for the first phase had been completed successfully. It achieved expected results and also found a resolution to update base stations at low cost.

It is said that through smooth upgrading and simple equipment replacement, China Mobile can upgrade the 3G base stations into 4G ones in Hangzhou. Thus the existing 3G network facilities can be used to the most, which will save nearly 90 percent of construction work. The construction period for a single base station is reduced from about 2 months to 3 days. Meanwhile, it also saves much investment in network construction. Technically, it makes easier the transformation from 3G to 4G.

The formal identification of TD-LTE technology as 4G international standard sounds the bugle again to speed up 4G commercialization in China. Li Yue said that China Mobile will accelerate LD-LTE development in China so as to speed up 4G development. China Mobile will start the 4G expanded-scale test network construction in 2012 and constructed over 20,000 4G base stations in 9 cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. TD-LTE updates will be conducted in big cities in Zhejiang and Guangzhou Province so as to achieve complete coverage in the urban area. Meanwhile, China Mobile will carry out pre-commercialization of 4G business in cities like Hangzhou and Shenzhen. After the success of 4G expanded-scale test in 2013, China Mobile will increase the 4G base stations to more than 200,000.