Wang Jianzhou, chairman and chief executive officer of China Mobile, yesterday delivered a wide-ranging keynote speech at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress that revealed a variety of major new high-profile developments underway at the world’s largest mobile operator. Chairman Wang talked up the operator’s TD-SCDMA plans with the launch of a Nokia handset due today, spoke of his hopes for a TDD/FDD harmonised LTE standard, expressed interest in launching the iPhone and revealed plans for the Chinese operator to set up its own application store. Having now completed trial TD-SCDMA deployments in ten cities in China – with plans to extend this to 38 by next June – Chairman Wang dismissed recent media speculation over the quality of the technology by declaring “it runs well.” He said the challenge now is not improving the networks, but ensuring availability of compatible handsets. To that end, he revealed that the operator will today make an announcement with mobile phone market-leader Nokia on development of a TD-SCDMA handset, with Nokia providing TD-SCDMA devices “very soon.” Chairman Wang added that the operator is “paying much attention to the interoperability of 2G and 3G operations.”

Meanwhile, Chairman Wang expressed hope that the LTE community would be able to “harmonise” development  of next-generation mobile technology. “We suggest a TDD [unpaired spectrum] and FDD [paired spectrum] harmonised LTE international standard,” he told delegates. “Harmonised spectrum was the dream of telecom people and we hope the dream will come true when we enter the next stage of LTE.” At the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last February the operator announced its intention to trial TD-LTE technology. Now China Mobile wants vendors to actively integrate FDD and TDD in the development and manufacture of LTE equipment. On the subject of the operator’s much-rumoured plans to launch Apple’s iPhone, Chairman Wang said, “China Mobile is still interested in introducing iPhone in the Chinese market” but said he could not provide specific details due to an existing non-disclosure agreement. He also expressed his admiration for Apple’s App Store, declaring that the operator plans to follow Apple’s initiative with a similar move of its own.