China Mobile has pushed back a multi-billion dollar tender for 4G / LTE network equipment. The tender for the equipment for the operator’s planned rollout of (TDD-LTE) technology was originally planned for April, but has now been delayed until June whilst the operator decides whether to build the network from scratch or upgrade its existing 3G TD-SCDMA base stations.
China Mobile is looking to source equipment for some 200,000 base stations in 100 cities through the tender, worth an estimated USD 6 billion. If it upgrades the existing network, TD-SCDMA suppliers such as Huawei and ZTE will be benefited and a new build would benefit Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks.
Developing its current network assets would entail using the spectrum band of 1880MHz-1920MHz for 4G, whilst a completely new network would utilise frequencies in the 2570MHz-2620MHz band.
China Mobile WLAN
China Mobile has around 40mn WLAN subscribers, according to one WLAN equipment vendor. The WLAN vendor also reveals China Mobile is not satisfied with the current status and recent development. The WLAN Access Points target by end of 2015 is 6mn (Currently WLAN target for 2013 is 1.5mn, vs. 1.29mn at the end of 2012), while the company has not disclosed its target for WLAN subscribers.
China Mobile began to charge in the WLAN business from this year, while the declining broadband tariff formed a big challenge to such charging in the WLAN business. Shandong and Shanghai have very fast development in WLAN. Shandong has 3mn WLAN subscribers and the data traffic accounted for 30% of whole CM WLAN business. Shanghai plans to have over 90k AP by end of 2013. The coverage will become 80%.
Bulk of China Mobile’s Data Traffic is carried by WLAN and contributes less than 10% to the revenues. Going forward, the company must de-emphasize WLAN in order to better monetize rising data traffic, especially after commercial launch of 4G services.