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Digitimes Research: China Mobile excluded from FD-LTE pilot operation licenses

Benson Wu, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued two FD-LTE pilot operation licenses to China Unicom and China Telecom on June 27 for several cities in China. However, China Mobile, which is most aggressive about FD/TD-LTE dual-mode network technology was excluded, showing that the China government is trying to control the telecom market from being dominated by one player throgh the license distributing.

By the end of May 2014, China Mobile had added 8.1 million users to its 4G services and China Unicom saw a 22% decrease in new 3G users. This follows developments in China during 2013 when China Mobile held 81% of profits out of the three major telecom providers in China, prompting concern that China Mobile's presence would dominate even further into the following year.

Digitimes Research, however, believes the China ministry's move will help push forth the LTE standard into the market, which will cause changes in regards to how much providers dominate the market as well as vendor-telecom cooperation.

Content from this article was part of a complete Digitimes Research Chinese-language report that has not yet been translated into English. If you are interested in an English version of the report or wish to receive more information about the report, click here to contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Digitimes Research also provides quarterly tracking services for market sectors such as China Smartphone, China Smartphone AP, Taiwan ICT and Taiwan FPD. Click here for more information about Digitimes Research Tracking services.