May, 2008

News from the 2008 LTE Summit is that the three telecom operators in China have set up a total of 14772 TD base stations across the country.

According to Xu Jingtao, marketing director of Datang Mobile, China Mobile has built about 14000 TD base stations in eight cities across China; China Telecom has built 240 in Baoding; and China Netcom has set up 413 in Qingdao. This has made the total TD base station number in China reach 14772, covering ten Chinese cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shenyang, Qinhuangdao, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Qingdao and Baoding.

Xue also said that China's TD technology had proceeded from R5 to R7 and MBMS mobile phone television service is being experimented with by China's Ministry of Information Industry — China Mobile is expected to soon put it into commercial operation. MBMS refers to Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service, which can be used via GSM and UMTS cellular networks and utilizes multicast distribution in the core network instead of point-to-point links for the receiving devices.