Nokia signs LTE-A deal with China Mobile
LTE-Advanced is coming to China as Nokia prepares to roll out the technology it demonstrated this summer in partnership with China Mobile. LTE-A is part of the third phase of the carrier’s LTE rollout. Nokia said it will deploy TD-LTE base stations and small cells, both supported by carrier aggregation. Nokia base stations will support service in China Mobile’s 1.9 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 2.3 GHz frequency bands.
China Mobile, which is the world’s largest mobile operator, plans to deploy one million LTE base stations by the end of this year, according to Nokia, which is China Mobile’s largest non-Chinese base station vendor and has a 20-year history in the Chinese market.
Nokia said it is the only non-Chinese vendor to support the evolution of TD-SCDMA to TD-LTE. TD-SCDMA is China’s national 3G standard, and TD-LTE is China Mobile’s LTE standard. It uses time division to separate upload and download traffic.
Nokia has launched TD-LTE networks in Latin America, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and claims more than 50 commercial references on six continents for the delivery of TD-LTE radio technology.
In addition to radio equipment, Nokia is supplying China Mobile with evolved packet core and GSM equipment, core application platforms, operating support systems, software and services. Last fall, China Mobile said it would spend roughly $970 million with Nokia during 2014 and 2015.
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