SK Telecom has announced an agreement to share LTE technology and expertise with China Telecom, to help the latter with its LTE rollout in Shanghai.
As part of the arrangement, SK Telecom will send a team of telecom experts to China to assist with the rollout, Yonhap News reported.
SK Telecom also plans to extend these consulting services to more Chinese cities in the future.
Yonhap cites SK Telecom as saying that it reached a similar LTE collaboration agreement with an Indonesian operator earlier this month. The operator was not named, but early last year SK Telecom entered a mobile and online services joint venture with XL Axiata.
SK Telecom is also reportedly exploring forging similar LTE alliances with operators in Taiwan and Mongolia.
The Chinese government finally awarded LTE licenses to each of the nation's three mobile operators in December last year. But the licenses currently only cover the homegrown TD-LTE standard, and China Telecom plans to rely primarily on FDD LTE for its 4G services.
Ovum expects China Telecom to begin with a TD-LTE rollout, then overlay FD-LTE equipment over the network as soon as FDD licenses are allocated.