Bharti Airtel, China Mobile to jointly foster 4G TD-LTE growth

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel, India’s leading operator, Tuesday tied up with China Mobile to work towards the growth of the 4G ecosystem and evolution of the TD-LTE mobile technology standard.

China Mobile and Airtel, among the world’s top telcos by subscriber base, are offering 4G services in their respective countries using the TDD-LTE technology standard, which uses the 2300 Mhz spectrum band, ecosystem, including that for handsets, for which hasn’t developed all that much across the world. Both companies are also among the founding members of the Global TD-LTE initiative.

“Airtel and China Mobile will also work towards shaping up a joint strategy for procurement of devices that include Mifi, smart phones, data cards, LTE CPEs and USIM,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

“China Mobile and Airtel will cooperate on standards and products development, and promoting a robust ecosystem to accelerate the commercialization of TD-LTE and evolving 4.5G/ 5G technologies,” they added.

A memorandum of understanding has been signed by Xi Guohua, Chairman, China Mobile, and Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, Bharti Airtel.

Airtel’s 4G services using TDD-LTE – currently offered in some cities – hasn’t had much success in terms of subscriber additions, with limitations around the penetration of the airwave, relatively higher price of handsets supporting this technological standard and poor quality of voice being among major impediments.

With both China and India on the cusp of large scale roll-out of high speed 4G data services, China Mobile and Airtel plan to share relevant network as well as product knowledge (specifically for new technologies like 4G), best practices and technical learnings to enable delivery of world-class affordable services to customers, the companies said.

“India and China account for nearly third of all the mobile subscribers globally and this partnership will provide a major platform for development and deployment of 4G and future mobile technology standards as both countries enter a phase of explosive data led growth,” Mittal said.

Mittal added that the two telcos are confident that the exchange of best practices and innovations would help in delivering affordable high-speed mobile internet to the masses and contribute to the Indian Government’s ‘Digital India’ vision.