RAN Research Note: China's TD-LTE Who will profit from the 4G push?

As the rush of US investment in LTE peaks, and the market still waits for major effort in India, the star of the wireless infrastructure sector in 2014 will clearly be China, now that the government has allocated spectrum and 4G operating licences to all three cellcos. Maravedis-Rethink estimates that these three operators will spend $15.6bn next year on LTE access networks and last mile backhaul expansion, plus associated software and services. China Mobile will account for most of this, as it will move more quickly towards LTE than its two rivals, both of which have more mileage to gain from their 3G systems, and less enthusiasm for the TDD flavor of the technology. All the same, China Unicom is set to allocate one-fifth of its capex budget to TD-LTE in 2014 and China Telecom over one-quarter, while China Mobile‟s first wave RAN awards, made recently, are worth an estimated CNY20bn ($3.3bn) on their own.....