WNA

The Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) held an International Summit at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week. The organization advocates cooperation among global operators around TD-LTE and the coexistence of TD-LTE and LTE FDD standards.

TDD spectrum resources are available in many countries, mainly in the 2.3 and 2.6 gigahertz bands.

China Mobile plans to install 500,000 base stations across 340 cities by the end of this year and promote the evolution to LTE-A and increase the data rate from 100M to 200M, 400M or even 1G. China Mobile hopes to commercialize VoLTE by the end of 2014 and joined forces with South Korea’s KT to launch two-way global roaming service allowing interoperability between TD-LTE and FDD-LTE.

Gopal Vittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel India’s largest mobile carrier, said what the world needed was a good $100 LTE phone. India is also using Time Division LTE, but in the 2.3-2.4 GHz band.

During the summit, GTI showcased 5-mode 13-band terminals in collaboration with its industry partners. China Mobile plans to purchase more than 100 million LTE terminals and promote smartphones supporting 5 modes and 12 or more bands.

The GTI awards recognised the successful deployment of ZTE’s Cloud Radio Solution in Chinese TD-LTE commercial networks, and ZTE’s leading position in the global TD-LTE market.

NSN won a GTI Innovation award for its “Liquid Applications”, NSN’s thrust on bringing cloud to networking.

At the heart of Liquid Applications is the NSN Radio Application Cloud Server which deploys cloud technology, running on standard IT middleware. It provides processing and storage capabilities, together with the ability to collect real-time network data.

At MWC 2014, the WiMAX Forum announced a partnership with the Global TD-LTE Initiative aimed to guarantee WiMAX Advanced is compatible with TD-LTE.

GTI has 100 operator members and 73 partners. Under the promotion of GTI, 28 commercial TD-LTE networks have been launched around the world and more than 40 operator members are planning and constructing their commercial TD-LTE networks.