China Mobile to join Vodafone-Verizon LTE trials

China Mobile to join Vodafone-Verizon LTE trials. China Mobile announced today that it is set to join LTE (Long Term Evolution) trials already being carried out by Vodafone and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone. The three mobile operators will focus on LTE FDD (the Frequency Division Duplex version of LTE) for use with paired spectrum allocations and TD-LTE (the Time Division Duplex version of LTE) as an evolution of current TD-SCDMA technology to enable the exploitation of unpaired spectrum globally.

The trials are designed to "explore the performance of LTE with different spectrum types as a potential next generation mobile technology." They will provide an opportunity to adopt a harmonised access platform with global scale and high performance inter-working with the existing technologies of all three companies.

Multi-mode devices will create regional and global roaming opportunities, while raising the prospect of providing greater interoperability between different global operators at the same time.