China looks to Taiwan for 4G development

While Thailand is stuck on 2.5G mobile technology as its 3G auction process stalls once again, China Mobile is pushing its contacts for 4G technology out to Taiwan inviting a range of tech companies involved in the mobile telecoms process over to China for a series of conferences aimed at starting the 4G process, as DigiTimes reports.

Chairman Wang Jian-zhou for China Mobile Communications, the largest mobile telecom carrier in China, has invited Taiwan-based enterprises in the WiMAX supply chain to attend conferences and forums scheduled for October in China, aiming at cooperation for developing 4G technologies, according to industry sources in Taiwan.

Of course, as with everything tech… or perhaps just everything in general in the country, there is a catch.

China runs its mobile networks to a unique frequency all of its own, and this will remain the same for 3G with the China Mobile who is looking to TD-LTE, a version of LTE (long-time evolution) which is essentially the extension of the (existing) 3G technology used across much of the world.

However, given that LTE-TDE is similar to WiMAX, Taiwan is an ideal choice for potential partners and integrators.

In view of Taiwan-based WiMAX hardware makers’ technological capabilities and the similarity of WiMAX to TD-LTE, China Mobile wants to learn from Taiwan’s WiMAX development and cooperate with Taiwan-based players to facilitate its R&D and deployment of TD-LTE, the sources said.

Thailand can forget about WiMAX, LTE or even the TD version until it overcomes many of the issues blighting its telecom industry – see this guest post from an anonymous telecom industry insider for more details.

 

 

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