China Telecom on Monday said it would begin selling the iPhone 4S on March 9. The company will start taking online reservations on March 2. iPhone 4S will be available on select contracts in China Telecom’s authorized stores and online, reports GigaOm.
China Telecom, a GSM-based network, currently has around 130 million subscribers. China Telecom also has the largest single WiFi wireless broadband network with over 30,000 hotspot locations covering hotels, restaurants and transportation facilities in over 250 major Chinese cities. China Telecom runs land-line and mobile phone networks. In 2008, the company acquired the CDMA assetts from China Unicom.
China Unicom already carries the iPhone. China Unicom is the world’s third-biggest mobile provider. On 7 January 2009, they were awarded a WCDMA license to expand its business to 3G, which is just getting started in China. Currently, most Chinese iPhone users are stuck with 2G data speeds.
But both those networks will pale in comparison to the largest cellular carrier in the world, China Mobile, with roughly 650 million subscribers. The company controls 70% of the Chinese mobile market, but a far smaller percentage of the 3G market. As of 2010 97% of China Mobile subscribers used its 2G services.
China Mobile’s 3G network utilizes China’s fairly unique TD-SCDMA standard, which China Mobile helped develop. But China Mobile will use the globally adopted TD-LTE standard for 4G service.
The Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) is a virtual open platform to advocate cooperation among global operators to promote TD-LTE. China Mobile and Clearwire established a joint test platform for TD-LTE devices. The two companies will collaborate to enable worldwide data roaming among TD-LTE, FDD-LTE and other 2G/3G networks.
The iPhone5, rumored to launch in the early fall, and the iPad 3, expected to launch March 7th, may offer hints as to Apple’s support of “world standard” 4G. If the iPhone5 supported TD-LTE, the same platform might be able to use both Sprint’s Clearwire network and China Mobile.
