China Mobile, the world's largest operator by subscriptions, has reached an agreement with 11 operators worldwide to co-operate on TDD-LTE. The move underlines China Mobile's intent to create a sizeable global market for TDD-LTE, a technology the operator is heavily invested in.

The Secretary General of China's TD-SCDMA Alliance, Yang Ye, disclosed the plans. No operator names were provided, but some operators, such as Vodafone and Verizon Wireless have previously voiced support for TDD-LTE. Indeed, Vodafone, China Mobile and Verizon Wireless are engaged in joint TDD-LTE testing.

Chipset suppliers including ST-Ericsson and Qualcomm are among manufacturers developing equipment capable of supporting both FDD and TDD flavours of LTE in a single device.

By end-May, China Mobile had 9.32 million TD-SCDMA subscriptions. The operator plans to increase TD-SCDMA network coverage to 330 cities with over 200,000 base stations by end-2010.

TDD-LTE has a potentially vibrant global market, something which is essential to China Mobile's mobile broadband plans to ensure a large TDD-LTE eco-system. Many operators have unpaired spectrum they have yet to use and TDD-LTE is ideally suited to it.

Meanwhile, the recent auction in India saw Qualcomm win licenses to ensure the prominence of TDD-LTE in that major market.