Chinese authorities are believed to have allocated spectrum suitable for FDD-LTE services to China Unicom and China Telecom, against a backdrop of speculation that the licence process would favour the TD-LTE standard supported by China Mobile.

According to Marbridge Daily, China Unicom has been allocated frequencies in the 1.8GHz band while China Telecom has a 2.1GHz allocation. China Mobile is rolling out its TD-LTE network using frequencies in the 2.6GHz band.

Earlier this year, China Unicom, which had said its long term strategy was to support FDD-LTE, also revealed plans to deploy a trial TD-LTE network in the second half of this year, in the belief that the authorities would favour “indigenous” technologies – China played a pivotal role in the development of TD-LTE – ahead of international standards.

And China Telecom said it plans a “hybrid” deployment of TD-LTE and FDD-LTE technology.

It has also been suggested that China Unicom and China Telecom may look to lease TD-LTE capacity from China Mobile, to reduce infrastructure spend while also showing support for a technology that is favoured by the authorities.

FDD-LTE is currently the more widely deployed incarnation of the technology. But TD-LTE is far from being a China-only standard, with some high-profile international backers also supporting it – including SoftBank in Japan and Bharti Airtel in India.

This differs from the situation in 3G, where the home-grown technology adopted by China Mobile – TD-SCDMA – did not gain traction internationally.

With regard to the current reports, China Unicom appears to have got the better end of the deal, with 1.8GHz already a commonly-supported band for FDD-LTE – meaning it will be able to benefit from widely available infrastructure and terminals.