Chinese mobile operator unveils latest TD-LTE trial, running on dongles supplied by Huawei.

Huawei on Friday announced it has begun a TD-LTE trial in partnership with China Mobile that will provide high-speed mobile coverage during this year\'s Summer Universiade sports event, taking place in Shenzhen.

The kit maker said it is providing China Mobile with an end-to-end solution that includes dual-mode USB dongles capable of running on both FD-LTE and TD-LTE networks.

Huawei claimed that during its tests the technology was stable, reaching connection speeds of between 60 Mbps and 70 Mbps, and was able to stream and transmit HD video.

The trial network will cover all the stadia during the Universiade, including the Gymnasium of Shenzhen Bay Sports Center. The Summer Universiade is a multi-sport event similar to the Olympics that is contested by university athletes from all over the world.

"We are proud of this successful launch as it helps move the industry forward by demonstrating the high quality performance of LTE TDD networks," said Deng Taihua, Huawei\'s president of WiMAX, TDS, and LTE, in a statement.

Huawei said this latest trial marks the third collaboration between the two companies, following the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, and the 16th Guanzhou Asia Games.

China Mobile has also been working with other manufacturers to develop the homegrown TD-LTE standard, including Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks. The latter revealed in July it has been operating trial networks in Hangzhou and Xiamen for China Mobile since May.

Meanwhile Ericsso\'s chief financial officer Jan Frykhammar declared to Total Telecom in April that 2011 is "the year of TD-LTE", commenting that the Swedish equipment provider hopes to be selected as a vendor for wide-scale network deployments expected to begin later this year.

In May China Mobile also announced that it was working with Apple on a TD-LTE version of the iPhone.

Elsewhere, TD-LTE is seeing momentum in India following the country\'s broadband wireless access (BWA) auction last year. Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Alcatel-Lucent\'s Asia-Pacific operations, said in February that if operators that acquired BWA licences want to see a return on their investments they will have to begin rolling out base stations, predicting commercial launches by Q1 2012.