GTI: TDD/FDD convergence paves the way for future mobile broadband

The Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) recently celebrated five years of success. Huawei caught up with the group to discuss its progress and plans for the future.

What was GTI’s mission when it was established in 2011? What are its biggest achievements? Did GTI achieve its initial mission? How do global industry players evaluate GTI’s success?

GTI: GTI’s mission was to construct a robust ecosystem of TD-LTE technology, speed up the commercialization of TD-LTE, and promote the convergence of LTE TDD and FDD. Our achievements include successfully building a global end-to-end TD-LTE ecosystem, successfully commercializing TD-LTE globally, successfully converging TDD and FDD, and initiating joint operations. We definitely achieved our first-stage mission. In fact, we exceeded expectations. The global industry has witnessed GTI’s success and, as GTI’s chairman, I’ve received many positive comments from the industry.

During MWC 2016 in Barcelona, Mats Granryd, Director General of GSMA, presented an award to GTI, recognizing the five-year partnership between GTI and GSMA. He also strongly praised GTI’s continuous work on TD-LTE and the convergence of LTE TDD/FDD. Zhao Houlin, Secretary-General of ITU, commented, “GTI has made great achievements in driving the rapid and successful deployment of TD-LTE worldwide. I do believe that ITU and GTI will enjoy stepping up their cooperation and driving a prosperous future for TD-LTE.”

Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel, told GTI, “There’s no doubt that India is committed to TD-LTE, and Bharti is committed to GTI.” Shin Jong-kyun, President of Samsung, said, “We greatly appreciate GTI’s strong support for TD-LTE development and fully respect its commitment and leadership in pursuing this new technology.”

From a network vendor perspective, Rajeev Suri, CEO of Nokia, remarked, “We acknowledge GTI’s support and help in achieving maturity in TD-LTE technology and look forward to many stakeholders sharing our passion for TD-LTE as we move forward.”

Moreover, last year GTI evaluated how to move forward now we’ve accomplished our initial mission. Many industry executives told us that GTI must not stop and that TDD still needs GTI to move to 5G, which strengthened our conviction to push GTI 2.0.

GTI officially moved into GTI 2.0 in February 2016. What’s your new mission? How will you achieve it?

GTI: The mission of GTI 2.0 is to continue TD-LTE Global Development by continuing to promote TD-LTE, enlarging the scale of converged TDD/FDD terminals and networks, and promoting the development of TD-LTE enhanced technologies. We also want to propel 5G development and will do that by promoting and utilizing the advantages of TDD to facilitate 5G development, promoting 5G unified standards and the E2E ecosystem, and exploring 5G cross-industry market opportunities. GTI has already become the most important global TDD platform, and we have a great industry base with 124 operator members and 111 partners.

Secondly, GTI 2.0 has obtained core operator support. The Chairman/CEO of Bharti Enterprises, China Mobile, KT, SoftBank and Vodafone have formed the GTI Leaders Committee, pushing GTI’s future strategies to explore new markets and create innovative services and business models to lead 5G development. 

Thirdly, compared with other global organizations, GTI is more focused on industrialization and trials. We have rich experience in quickly pushing the development of the E2E ecosystem.

What kind of role does GTI play in improving the global influence of Chinese companies?

GTI: Chinese enterprises like operators and end-to-end vendors contribute a lot to GTI’s work. Without their contribution, we wouldn’t have GTI or TD-LTE today. In fact, GTI is the most important platform for Chinese companies. With the great success of TD-LTE globally, Chinese enterprises and Chinese telecommunication techniques have won global recognition. GTI provides a great international stage for Chinese enterprises to showcase advanced TDD technologies and solutions, as we connect them to global operators and the worldwide industry.

During GTI’s growth over five years, Chinese enterprises entered the global mobile market with incredible speed, including Huawei and ZTE and terminal manufacturers like Xiaomi and Oppo. With TD-LTE development, I believe Chinese enterprises will go further in the 5G era through GTI.