Bharti Airtel, China Mobile tieup for evolving mobile technology

Bharti Airtel has entered into a strategic collaboration with China Mobile under which the two companies will work towards the growth of the LTE (long term evolution) ecosystem and evolving mobile technology standards, a company statement said here Tuesday.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua and Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal.

"India and China account for nearly third of all the mobile subscribers globally and this partnership will provide a major platform for development and deployment of 4G and future mobile technology standards as both countries enter a phase of explosive data led growth," Mittal said.

The strategic collaboration aims to bring together the largest mobile operators from the world's two largest mobile markets - China and India. China Mobile and Airtel are also among the founding members of the Global TD-LTE (Time division-Long term evolution) initiative.

Additionally, China Mobile and Airtel will cooperate on standards and products development, and promoting a robust ecosystem to accelerate the commercialization of TD-LTE and evolving 4.5G/5G technologies, the statement said.

Airtel and China Mobile will also work towards shaping up a joint strategy for procurement of devices that include Mifi, smart phones, data cards, LTE CPEs and USIM.

"We are confident that the exchange of best practices and innovations will help in delivering affordable high speed mobile internet to the masses and contribute to the Indian government's 'Digital India' vision," Mittal added.

Both companies will work together for understanding and sharing testing and validation practices (including network equipment, features and new releases etc.) and also jointly conduct proof of concepts as well as trials.

China Mobile and Airtel will also aim to bring in cost efficiencies by driving synergies in their procurement strategies, among other collaborative efforts included in this MoU agreement, the statement added.