ZTE is reported to have scored the biggest TD-LTE contract to date, with India\'s Bharti Airtel, as signs of life start to be seen in the junior branch of the 4G family.

China Mobile is the leading flagwaver for LTE in unpaired spectrum, and built a major showcase network at last year\'s Shanghai Expo, though its commercial timescales are hazy. It recently attracted Clearwire, which plans migrations to TD-LTE and LTE-Advanced, to a carrier alliance which aims to foster a device ecosystem. Saudi Arabia\'s Mobily recently became the first TD-LTE commercial carrier, but the first large-scale roll-out is likely to come in India, where Reliance Infotel has national BWA spectrum in 2.3GHz and major deployments are also planned by Bharti and others.

India\'s Economic Times reports that the initial deal will cover a network of 850 cell sites in the major city of Kolkata, which could be extended to the other telecoms circles in future. Bharti, the largest Indian cellco, has BWA licences in Maharashtra, Kolkata, Karnataka and Punjab. A source valued the contract at $300m.

The Chinese OEMs have led the way in TD-LTE, along with Samsung, partly building on their experience with the other TDD mobile broadband platform, WiMAX. Huawei is working with Clearwire and Mobily but ZTE claims the lead in TD-LTE trials worldwide - although China Mobile\'s Shanghai network was provided by Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola (now Nokia Siemens).

ZTE has also announced the industry\'s first interoperability verification test between FDD and TDD flavors of LTE, as well as GSM/UMTS. This used the vendor\'s multimode Uni-Ran system, which it says can be used to achieve a cost effective, step-by-step migration from 2G and 3G to LTE. ZTE said it won 23 commercial LTE contracts in the first half of 2011, including deals with CSL, Telenor, Sonaecom and Hi3G.

Back in India, the Department of Telecommunications is in discussions with the federal finance ministry to hold another round of wireless broadband spectrum auctions. But Qualcomm, which acquired 2.3GHz frequencies in four circles in the previous sale, is battling not to lose the $1bn it paid, because it allegedly missed the deadline to apply for operating licences in the band. It has been working with local partners on future TD-LTE plans but aims to sell its spectrum at an early stage to another operator. Last week, the US firm won the right to appeal against the forfeiture of its spectrum.