China: No 4G licenses for another two to three years.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

China: No 4G licenses  for another two to three years.

China likely to wait at least another two years before issuing 4G licenses, so that it has more time to build more base stations, and allow vendors to develop handsets for the high-speed network, according to reports.

In PCWorld's report last Friday, Miao Wei, head of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the country currently had 220,000 TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) base stations, but planned to expand the number to a total of 400,000 before offering 4G licenses.

The news site noted that the China was currently holding large-scale 4G trials using LTE TDD (Long-Term Evolution Time-Division Duplex) technology, also known as TD-LTE.

Miao was quoted saying that China planned to roll out LTE TDD by upgrading existing base stations that use the 3G TD-SCDMA standard, which could take about three years time.

He added that the government would also need to encourage handset and chip vendors to support LTE TDD phones, which he cited as a barrier that had been holding back China's 4G development.

According to PCWord, China is estimated to be close to hitting one billion mobile phone users, but the country's 3G networks--which went online in 2009--accounted for only 135 million users.