Tim Cook is apparently in China, hanging out at China Mobile headquarters this morning, accompanied by 7 to 8 people, and likely talking to executives from China Mobile to discuss “bilateral” cooperation for the iPhone, according to Chinese reporter Sina Weibo.
It has long been speculated that Apple and China Mobile are working towards a deal that would see Apple supporting TD-LTE radio technology in future Chinese iPhones.
If this has nothing to do with TD-LTE, we’d be pretty surprised. While LTE isn’t quite ready for deployment in North America, a number of carriers have been working to bring their infrastructures up to date with modern day wireless broadband needs. Supporting TD-LTE in the next iPhone would likely play a large part in the carriers ensuring that their LTE networks are built to support the technology.
Could the iPhone 5 be TD-LTE capable?
What’s TD-LTE, and how’s it different from LTE?
Time Division LTE (TD-LTE) is a new standard that has been gaining serious steam over the last few months, and it just so happens to be developed by China Mobile. Normal LTE requires two channels for data transmission, one for upload and another for download, but with TD – LTE there’s only a need for a signal channel that can allocate upload and download bandwidth based on need. TD-LTE dynamically assigns the bandwidth for each up and/or down stream based on your need. It’s not a fixed split. TD-LTE also runs on a different part of the wireless spectrum that has much less traffic on it currently, which could translate into better speeds, and a more solid connection to your carrier.
Finally, perhaps one of the biggest perks with the technology is that LTE and TD-LTE are so similar, TD-LTE can make use of the same chip to access either LTE or TD-LTE networks.
Article Via M.I.C Gadgets
