You may remember that, when I recently wrote about the state of affairs for LTE in China, I had talked about the intense, large-scale trials that were going on in that market.
I recently took a trip to China and was blown away almost immediately by what I saw there. While the trials are still taking place, ads can be seen everywhere offering the ability for consumers to place their orders for LTE-enabled devices.
For now, it’s China Mobile that is able to offer such services, but China Telecom will also soon receive commercial licenses, and that’s what we at Altair are particularly excited about.
You see, China Mobile has been focusing primarily on a homegrown technology that includes 3G capabilities, and the company – having invested so much in that technology – is mandating that all devices must include it for now, from phones to tablets to MiFi, etc.
China Telecom, on the other hand, has issued specific bids for terminals with single-mode LTE. And, of course, if you’ve been following Altair you know this is what we believe is the right approach, for several reasons. But it’s also going to benefit Chinese consumers in ways that will be obvious fairly quickly, or at least at the point where the user selects which device to buy.
Our perspective is that there is plenty of room in the market for several players, but we are excited that a major Chinese operator – China Telecom – is moving forward on single-mode LTE and M1 networks, which, at the end of the day, will help the consumer.
So things are starting to move in China, and as we in the telecom market know, when China decides to move, it can move pretty fast