Vividwireless - which presently operates mobile WiMAX networks in capital cities - has joined the Global TD-LTE Initiative (time division long term evolution) launched at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.

GTI, which held its first working meeting in Guangzhou earlier this month, was formed to promote the TD-LTE ecosystem as a major standard in mobile broadband technology and drive the early development TD-LTE networks. Its founding members were ChinaMobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Vodafone, Clearwire, E-Plus, and Aero2. Vividwireless says it was invited to join at the launch.

Commenting on the launch of GTI at the time, Julien Grivolas, principal analyst at Ovum said: "A certain scale for LTE TDD was guaranteed by strong support from China Mobile, the largest operator in the world. However, as TD-SCDMA [China\'s 3G mobile standard] proved to its cost, this is not necessarily enough to make LTE TDD technology a global success. China Mobile consequently considered it strategically vital to garner support from other key players."

He added: "This LTE TDD evangelism started years ago, often behind the scenes, and finally came to fruition with the creation of the GTI. As a consequence, the main merit of the GTI announcement really lies in the official support for LTE TDD (and better harmonisation with LTE FDD) from a number of international players.

"With heavyweights such as China Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, and Vodafone Group – serving more than 1.1 billion subscribers in total at the end of 2010 – the GTI is certainly heading in the right direction. However, to further contribute to the virtuous cycle that the GTI aims to fuel, the organisation remains fully open to all operators and technology vendors interested in promoting LTE TDD."

Vividwireless said that the GTI would "organise a series of activities to bring TD-LTE operators and vendors together to share development strategies and technology know-how, expediting the development of terminals and fostering global roaming and low-cost terminals."

Vividwireless trialled LTE in Sydney earlier this year and says "The trials…demonstrated that TD-LTE can deliver wireless broadband that is faster than ADSL2+, with peak speeds as high as 128Mbps and consistent \'real world\' speeds between 40 - 70Mbps."

Following the trial the company said it was sufficiently impressed to consider using TD-LTE rather than WiMAX for its planned major east coast network rollouts. CEO Martin Mercer said "The technology is far more mature than we had expected. The Huawei SingleRAN solution [used in WiMAX mode in Vividwireless\' networks today] is basically ready to go today and is at a price point that would enable us to take service to market at prices comparable to what we offer today.

"We could deploy this technology in our east coast rollout and provide customers with services superior to those we provide today and equivalent prices. The question for us now based on the results of the trial is: do we rollout TD-LTE on the east coast…and do we deploy it in other markets as well?"

Source:Investorshub