Last week 4G WiMAX service providers P1 became Malaysia and Southeast Asia’s first operator to join the ranks of the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI) to champion TD-LTE technology. The GTI is a platform formed to create value for stakeholders across the TD-LTE ecosystem and dive early adoption of TD-LTE technology. For the uninitiated, LTE is the next evolution of 4G technology that promises to deliver wireless speeds of up to 1Gbps. Market intelligence firm Maravedis reported that by the end of 2011, there will be approximately 40 countries represented by 110 operators with 2.5 to 2.6GHz spectrum allocation for TD-LTE. P1 is one of nine Malaysian companies allocated the 2.6GHz spectrum as announced in 2010.

Michael Lai, CEO of P1 explained, “For any technology to be cutting edge, there has to have mass adoption. The GTI consists of founding members who are heavyweights namely China Mobile, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Clearwire and Vodafone Group. These operators collectively have a market potential of over half the world’s population. With its global scale, TD-LTE will also bring the widest selection and most cost effective high performance consumer devices like modems, routers, smart phones and tablets.”

To date, the total 20 members of GTI are Aero2-Poland, Belltell-Philippines, Bharti Airtel-India, China Mobile-China, Clearwire-USA, Datame-Finland, E-Plus – Germany,  FarEastone-Taiwan, FITEL-Taiwan, Korea Telecom-Korea, Omantel-Oman, Nextwave-USA, P1-Malaysia, Smoltelecom-Russia, SoftBank-Japan, Tatung Infocomm-Taiwan, Vividwireless-Australia,  Vodafone-UK, Voentelecom-Russia and Woosh-New Zealand.

SOURCE via Lowyat.NET