China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued two FD-LTE pilot operation licenses to China Unicom and China Telecom on June 27 for several cities in China. However, China Mobile, which is most aggressive about FD/TD-LTE dual-mode network technology was excluded, showing that the China government is trying to control the telecom market from being dominated by one player throgh the license distributing.
By the end of May 2014, China Mobile had added 8.1 million users to its 4G services and China Unicom saw a 22% decrease in new 3G users. This follows developments in China during 2013 when China Mobile held 81% of profits out of the three major telecom providers in China, prompting concern that China Mobile's presence would dominate even further into the following year.
Digitimes Research, however, believes the China ministry's move will help push forth the LTE standard into the market, which will cause changes in regards to how much providers dominate the market as well as vendor-telecom cooperation.
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