China Mobile side-steps LTE compatibility with cross-standard hardware

If you’re in any way confused about the different standards for LTE, then it only means you’re sane. It’s a bit of a mess for the average consumer to understand – there are multiple releases of LTE, differing standards, and even some debate over what 4G is and is not. China Mobile (partly responsible for the mess thanks to its own LTE standard called TD LTE) is trying to enable phone makers to get around the issue by releasing an antenna that will allow their devices cater to any existing form of LTE.

What’s the story?

China Mobile Research Institute and SkyCross have today announced their new antenna. It’s a type of smart antenna called MIMO, which stands for Multiple-In, Multiple-Out; it’s a way of using multiple, connected antennas to improve performance. The companies claim that the antenna allows them to cover 12 different frequency bands, making it tunable for TD LTE, LTE FDD, TD SCDMA,GSM EDGE and WCDMA networks worldwide.

Now, let’s be clear. This is just an antenna. There are still a lot of different components that need to be designed and perfected in order to create a truly universal LTE handset. Bill Huang, General Manager of China Mobile Research Institute said “our joint development effort with SkyCross has demonstrated that cost-effective, multimode, multiband antennas are technically achievable for global LTE handsets. We believe this demonstration will accelerate the development of universal handsets capable of roaming worldwide, as well as create the manufacturing volume to meet all operators’ requirements.”

What we think?

This is an interesting move from China Mobile. One of the main selling points for LTE was that it was meant to be a common standard that all operators could move forward from. It is specifically designed to be upgradeable, and to be backwards compatible with various standards. China Mobile really did cause some consternation when it announced it’s own, somewhat different version of LTE… and now it appears to be trying to selling the solution to a problem it created itself.