(Barcelona, February 22, 2014) The 9th GTI Workshop scheduled from February 20th to 21st was held in Barcelona, Spain before the 2014 GSMA World Mobile Congress. More than 130 delegates from 40 international operators and 30 OEMs, including China Mobile, SoftBank, Sprint, Vodafone, Huawei, ZTE, Sony, Samsung and Qualcomm attended this Workshop making in-depth discussions on key technical solutions and innovative service applications for the commercialization of TD-LTE.

Participants at the opening ceremony of 9th GTI Workshop on Feb 20, in Barcelona.

In 2013, GIT has made great breakthrough in promoting the global deployment of TD-LTE and solving key problems in the industry chain. 4G service has been commercialized in China, leading to a coming boom of global TD-LTE market. Japanese operator SoftBank pointed out at the Workshop that under the promotion of GTI, Japanese government officially planned 3.5 GHz band for TDD in January 2014 and to finish the distribution by this year. Besides SoftBank, other Japanese operators including DoCoMo and KDDI will obtain the spectrum and launch commercial TD-LTE-Advanced service in 2016. Indonesian WiMax operator PT Internux introduced its migration to TD-LTE, which was regarded as a catalyzer for the migration from WiMax to TD-LTE.

GTI announced its development plan of this year. According to the plan, the global deployment of TD-LTE will be further promoted and greater effort will be made to promote WiMax operators to immigrate to TD-LTE. The convergence of LTE TDD/FDD will be advanced and traditional FDD operators will be encouraged to deploy TD-LTE. Besides, GTI will advocate more emerging operators to obtain TDD frequency bands and deploy TD-LTE. GTI will also enhance the development of some key products and technologies such as low-cost terminals, VoLTE, global roaming and RCS. In addition, a new Innovative Industry Application and Business Model Working Subgroup will be established to engage in the research and development of LTE-featured industry applications and business models.

In terms of 4G terminals, Sony made the global debut of its 5-mode 13-band smart phone at this Workshop – indeed an eye-catching one. The research progress in 5-mode 13-band smart phones was also shared. This multi-mode multi-band terminal is suitable for the majority of mainstream frequency bands with global roaming capability and expected to hit market in Q2 2014. MediaTek showcased the MT6595, a premium mobile solution with the world’s first 4G LTE octa-core smartphone SOC powered by the latest Cortex-A17™ CPUs from ARM®. It will be commercially available by the first half of 2014, with devices expected in the second half of the year. To meet the growing demand of the global terminal market, Terminal WG also formulated the requirements for low-cost terminals after rounds of discussions with terminal manufacturers, laying a solid foundation for the commercialization of low-cost terminals.

Operators also discussed the requirements for the convergence of LTE TDD and FDD and Carrier Aggregation (CA) at this Summit. They expected to rely on GTI constantly to promote the maturity of TDD/FDD converged products and operation. CA, beamforming and other new technologies and products will be further matured to improve the performance of TD-LTE and provide users with more premium high-speed data service.

Jointly founded by China Mobile and other leading international mobile network operators in 2011, GTI has become a leading, most influential platform to promote the global deployment and commercialization of TD-LTE as well as the maturity of this industry. Focusing on the key areas for TD-LTE commercialization, GTI has set up a complete working group system covering network, terminal, spectrum and service, and made groundbreaking progress in these fields. After the joining of China Telecom on this February 13, GTI has now 73 partners and 100 operator members. Under the promotion of GTI, 28 commercial TD-LTE networks have been launched around the world, and more than 40 operator members are planning and constructing their commercial TD-LTE networks. GTI has been playing a more and more significant role in driving the global deployment of TD-LTE, and fast development of relevant technologies, products, business and applications for TD-LTE.