China Telecom in catch-up mode on 4G services

China Telecom, the country's No3 wireless network operator, wants wider coverage for its so-called hybrid 4G mobile trials on the mainland after losing 4 million subscribers to competitors in the nine months to September.

In a regulatory filing yesterday, China Telecom chairman and chief executive Wang Xiaochu said the company will apply with the mainland regulator to expand the reach of those trials as well as obtain a new 4G network licence.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology gave the go-ahead in July for both China Telecom and China Unicom to conduct pilot testing of networks based on the world's two recognised 4G standards. One is the mainland-developed standard called time-division long-term evolution (TD-LTE), while the other is the more mature frequency-division duplex long-term evolution (FDD-LTE).

Wang said China Telecom, which had a total of 181.57 million mobile subscribers at the end of September, also wants to obtain a new FDD-LTE licence "to get fully prepared for the comprehensive commercial launch of 4G [on the mainland]".

The government issued TD-LTE licences to China Mobile, Unicom and China Telecom last December to start 4G infrastructure build-out in the country, the world's largest smartphone market. The network plans of Unicom and China Telecom were, however, more technically suited for FDD-LTE.

That situation enabled China Mobile, the world's largest wireless network operator by number of subscribers, to take the lead in signing up new users on its TD-LTE network. China Mobile had a total of 799.125 million mobile subscribers at the end of last month, of which 40.949 million are 4G users.