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China Mobile calls for iPhone 5 to support TDD-LTE

One of China Mobile’s general managers has stated his belief that the next iPhone will not only support LTE tech, but could potentially provide services over both the unpaired TDD and the paired FDD versions of LTE spectrum...

One of China Mobile’s general managers has stated his belief that the next iPhone will not only support LTE tech, but could potentially provide services over both the unpaired TDD and the paired FDD versions of LTE spectrum.

General Manager at the China Mobile Research Institute Bill Huang expressed this belief during a webinar at Mobile World Live, saying: "iPhone 5 will certainly be an LTE terminal that potentially will support both TDD and FDD."

Huang’s remarks add weight to the belief that Apple’s next iteration of its smartphone will support LTE technology. As China Mobile is pushing TDD tech – the majority of LTE services already launched have been based on FDD tech – it would be a major boon for the Chinese operator if Apple’s next device supported both versions. 

"We are promoting both TD-LTE and FDD-LTE convergence globally,” said Huang. "So when we deploy our terminals we will allow two types of terminals; TD-LTE-only terminals and both TDD/FDD combined terminals."

Although only China Unicom is the only Chinese operator officially partnered with Apple, there are around 10 million iPhone users on China Mobile’s network, according to the operator’s chairman, Wang Jianzhou. China Mobile has reportedly been attempting to secure an official partnership with Apple for several months.

Wang also claimed that Apple had pledged that at least model of its next-gen iPhone would support TD-LTE tech, although whether this would be the standard model or a revised version to be released at a later date was unclear.



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