China enters new era with grant of 4G mobile network licenses

Beijing has awarded fourth-generation (4G) mobile licences to the three major mainland telecommunications network operators, paving the way for the much-anticipated alliance between China Mobile and Apple in the world's biggest smartphone market.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology yesterday granted network licences based on the mainland-developed 4G standard time-division long-term evolution (TD-LTE) to China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, according to a notice on the ministry's website.

Network licences for the more widely deployed 4G standard, frequency-division duplex long-term evolution (FDD-LTE), was not awarded by the government.

The ministry said FDD-LTE licences will be issued "when conditions are more mature" on the mainland, without elaborating.

Beijing has been trying to engineer the economy's focus away from exports to consumption and the development of mobile broadband infrastructure is seen as a way to achieve that goal.

"The Chinese economy's transformation from an outward-oriented economy to one focused on domestic consumption can be realised with increased use of electronic payments," said Ricky Lai, analyst at Guotai Junan International.

"Improved network transmission speed and stability would enable more efficient e-commerce transactions and improved security."