He said China Mobile has already built more than 200,000 TD-LTE base stations across the country and procured 1 million 4G devices.
Moving forward, China Mobile plans to introduce commercial VoLTE next year and will also collaborate with vendors and other stakeholders to lower the cost of TD-LTE handsets, Li told audience at the opening of the ITU Telecom World.
“We hope to launch 1000 yuan ($744) TD-LTE handset by year-end and expect they [the 1000 yuan handsets] will become mainstream in the second half of 2014,” Li said.
China Mobile is also working with handset makers to launch its own brand 4G handsets and MIFI, and collaborating on the development of multi-band, multi-mode 4G handsets.