China Mobile has announced its business targets of reaching 1.40 million TD-LTE base stations, selling 330 million 4G devices and expanding the 4G subscriber base to over 500 million by end-2016. According to China Mobile chairman Shang Bing, the company deployed 1.10 million TD-LTE base stations by end-2015, covering over 1.2 billion population and offering 4G roaming with 114 countries and regions. China Mobile sold 300 million TD-LTE devices in 2015, following the addition of more than 400 TD-LTE users per minute.
China Mobile's current 4G subscriber base totals 340 million, accounting for about 30 percent of the global base. The operator has also completed the deployment of carrier aggregation in over 300 cities and has commercialized VoLTE services in 100 cities.
Bing said that China Mobile will accelerate its 4G deployment by increasing the number of TD-LTE base stations to 1.40 million and deploying CA technologies in central and hot-spot areas of all cities by end-2016. The operator will also commercialize VoLTE services in over 260 cities in the first half of this year, and plans to start selling the Rich Communication Service (RCS) in the second half of the year. China Mobile also wants to accelerate the uptake of VoLTE/CA-enabled devices, sell 330 million 4G devices and expand the 4G user base to over 500 million in 2016.
In addition, the operator said it wants to develop dedicated networks for the IoT and aims to realise 100 million IoT connections in 2016. According to Bing, China Mobile expects to increase the maturity of narrow-band IoT (NB-IOT) and commercialize it in 2017.
