China’s biggest carrier finally starts building a 4G network for the iPhone

[RaduTyrsina]

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China is building a net to catch the next generation iPhone that’s finally expected to arrive to the country’s most popular network – China Mobile. Even if the country presents a huge demand for Apple’s smartphone, the device is still not accessible via the nation’s major carrier. The customers who already purchased the iPhone – and there’s a lot of them, about 10 million – operate the phones without having compatibility with China’s Mobile 3G network.

However, this standard is about to change, as China Mobile recently announced it will make a new investment of 190.2 billion yuan (roughly $30.1 billion) with about a quarter of the money going into building the nation’s first TD-LTE 4G network. This is an important step for the carrier, which desperately needed an update in the department. O​​
nly 13% of the carrier’s customers also take advantage of the 3G services, because the speeds are quite low and Wi-Fi hotspots seem more advantageous to use. In contrast, 33% of China Unicom and 44% of China Telecom use 3G facilities. Bottom line, China Mobile needs to upgrade, fast!

China Mobile announced its intention of building the 4G network in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress and detailed that overall, the system will cover more than 200,000 stations. Thus, the carrier aims to bring 4G connectivity to more than 500 million users, spread around 100 Chinese cities across the country.

Apple has been paying a lot of attention to the Chinese market, as the potential for making flourishing business is immense. Recently, CEO Tim Cook himself has met with China Mobile executives and discussed the future of the iPhone on the network.

Source: Reuters

 

[alicepattinson]

Hmmmmm. This is intriguing :facetime::hdvideo: