Rumor: China Mobile Doesn’t Want to Be the Only 4G TD-LTE Network in China

China Mobile doesn't want to walk a lonely road this time around.

China Mobile has had a rough time in China’s 3G era. The company’s TD-SCDMA network has gone nowhere, and allowed competitors China Unicom and China Telecom to catch up as they racked up 3G subscribers China Mobile couldn’t attract. But China Mobile has been developing its proprietary 4G TD-LTE network and by all accounts it is looking fast. It could be a way to put the company way back out in front of its competitors again.

So it might come as a surprise that, according to a leaked memo and an anonymous source cited by Sina Tech, the company does not want to be the only operator of a 4G TD-LTE network in China. Rumor has it the company may be looking to China Telecom as a potential partner who could license its TD-LTE tech for Telecom’s own 4G network.

This might seem foolish because China Mobile pretty clearly has the best tech in the business right now when it comes to 4G. But it seems the company has learned a harsh lesson from its 3G failure, and would apparently prefer to make sure that TD-LTE catches on in China. That’s more likely to happen if there are two major carriers using the TD-LTE standard. And the adoption of TD-LTE as the standard in China would also make it more likely that overseas carriers might adopt the system, since mobile phone manufacturers will definitely be making TD-LTE capable phones if that become’s China’s 4G standard in an effort to capture China’s increasingly giant and lucrative mobile market.

Of course, whether or not China Telecom want to play along with this is another question entirely. China Telecom has made it pretty clear it isn’t that interested in 4G, and it hasn’t even applied to the government for a license to operate a 4G network. But as all three telecoms are state-owned and the market is closely regulated by the government, it’s possible that China Telecom could be (in essence) instructed to adopt TD-LTE for the sake of supporting the international adoption of the Chinese-developed TD-LTE standard instead of the competing FDD-LTE 4G standard. China Mobile’s internal memo makes an indirect reference to this, saying that it hopes telecoms will “share in the responsibility of developing and innovating China’s telecom networks, and become a great driving force for the industry.”

Bearing in mind this is all based on an anonymous source and a single leaked memo, it’s hard to say for now exactly what’s going to happen. But China’s telecom market could be in for a bit of a shake-up as the change to 4G gets closer. China Mobile, it seems, is willing to do almost anything to ensure that this time, its network standard doesn’t get left out.

[Via Sina Tech, Image Source]