Bharti Airtel, the largest telecom company in India, and China Mobile, the largest telecom operator in the world, have joined hands over a strategic collaboration aimed towards the growth of the LTE (long term evolution) ecosystem. The partnership between these two giants will also focus on evolving mobile technology standards moreover.
China Mobile chairman, Xi Guohua and Bharti Airtel chairman, Sunil Bharti Mittal have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the development and deployment of 4G and future mobile technology standards. This agreement comes at a time when both the nations are in the process of entering a phase of explosive data led growth.
It will help that both China Mobile and Bharti Airtel are among the founding members of the global TD-LTE (Time division-Long term evolution) initiative. Through a press statement, Sunil Bharti Mittal has reminded us that India and China account for nearly a third of all the mobile subscribers globally, which explains the exact scale of this partnership.
It has been revealed that China Mobile and Airtel will also cooperate on the development of standards and products. The two companies will look to create a joint strategy for procurement of devices like Mi-Fi gadgets, smartphones, data cards, LTE CPEs and USIMs.
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More importantly though, the agreement includes the clause that these telecom operators will work together to promote an ecosystem conducive to the acceleration of the commercialization of TD-LTE and the evolving 4.5G and 5G technologies. Additionally, both the companies will also work to understand and share testing and validation practices.
According to BGR India, China Mobile and Bharti Airtel have their eyes set on bringing cost efficiencies by driving synergies in their procurement strategies.