China Telecom

Company Overview

China Telecom (中国电信) is the third largest mobile carrier and telecommunications service provider operating in the Peoples Republic of China. The company was formed in 2002 when its state-owned parent China Telecommunications Corporation (中国电信集团公司) listed it on the SEHK as a publicly traded entity. China Telecommunications Corporation has been an incumbent fixed line services provider throughout China since 1995.

The company has historically been a provider of CDMA-2000 services and has not offered any 2G GSM or 3G UMTS services. To provide high speed data services 4G LTE TDD was launched over B40 (2300 MHz) and B41 (2500 MHz) in February 2014. In February 2015 China Telecom received additional 1800 MHz licences and permission to refarm existing 2100 MHz spectrum, subsequently launching B1 (2100 MHz) and B3 (1800 MHz) FDD LTE services.

In August 2015 the company launched its LTE-A "Tianyi 4G+" service providing up to 300 Mbps by 2C aggregating B1 with B3.

June 2016 saw China Telecom approved to deploy a B5 (850 MHz) FDD LTE network, and has subsequently enabled 3C aggregation allowing B5 to be attached to both B1 and B3 carriers. VoLTE was also enabled on the service, with a national deployment completed early 2017.

China Telecom claimed the world’s first FDD-TDD carrier aggregation demonstration with peak download speed of 260 Mbps achieved using 20 MHz of B3 (1800 MHz) and 20 MHz of B41 (2500 MHz).

While the company began testing back in 2016, March 2017 saw the first commercial use of NB-IoT (LTE Cat-NB1), which China Telecom provides within its B5 (850 MHz) carrier. A full commercial launch and nationwide coverage was achieved mid 2018.

China Telecom 5G

Throughout late 2017 China Telecom conducted 5G pilot programs in six cities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou, Chengdu and Lanzhou, with six to eight stations in each city primarily operating over the 3.5 GHz band. In December 2018 China Telecom received 5G test frequencies totalling 100 MHz bandwidth from 3400 MHz to 3500 MHz.