China Mobile to trial TD-LTE with Ericsson's help

China Mobile Ltd. (CHL) is moving forward with its TD-LTE plans having selected Ericsson (ERIC) to participate in a network trial of the technology in Shenzhen, China. The trial announcement follows interoperability testing between Ericsson’s network equipment and chipset manufacturers Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) and ST-Ericsson.
The TD-LTE standard is similar to the traditional FDD LTE technology being deployed by many mobile operators. The main difference is that the TD version can take advantage of large, single swaths of spectrum using time division duplex technology instead of needing different spectrum bands for uplink and downlink as required for FDD LTE.
China Mobile, which is far and away the world’s largest operator, said it added nearly 62 million customers in 2010, ending the year with 584 million subscribers. The carrier said it added just over 20 million customers using 3G services on its TD-SCDMA network in 2010 and that the 3G service was available in 656 cities using 135,000 base stations.