While it’s fashionable to wail about the slow deployment of 4G in Australia, spare a thought for the billions (and it is billions) in China, where the wait for 4G networks is still years away.
PCWorld reports that Miao Wei, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China was interviewed on state-owned TV and indicated that TD-LTE was at least three years away, based on current Ministry trials. TD-LTE is the technology that Vividwireless demonstrated back in February 2011. Vividwireless has been bought out by Optus, who had previously stated they’d bring LTE to Australia using the FD-LTE (Frequency Division Duplex LTE) standard, which is what Telstra uses for its 4G product.
OK, we’re not part of China as far as my passport tells me, but it’s an economic superpower, and an interesting contrast; we’ve already got some LTE services, and they’ve got none. Then again, China has a claimed 135 million 3G network users. Everyone in Australia would have to take on six different phones each just to be equivalent to those kinds of numbers, which suggests that if China does get behind it, TD-LTE might very well be the future. [PC World]