China is set to deploy the world's biggest 4G LTE network in the next six-month period; and, by 2013-end, more than one hundred cities and 500 million people will be covered by the high-speed network in the country.

Earlier, at the February 28-concluded 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, China Mobile's chairman Xi Guohua had said that a time-division variant of LTE (TD-LTE) was being developed by the carrier, which plans to have
220,000 base stations that would support the largest 4G TD-LTE telecoms network in the world, by the end of this year.

According to reports, China mobile is currently carrying out a trial of the TD-LTE network in 13 cities in the country; with Nokia Siemens Networks presently being the main equipment supplier for the carrier.

So far as the number of China Mobile customers is concerned, the carrier - going by the most recent, January 31, 2013, figures - has more than 714 customers; with approximately 4.3 million customers having been added since December 2012.

Meanwhile, about the deployment of 4G network in China, Mo Wan - one of the leading experts at the China Academy of Telecommunication Research - said that, by the year 2016, the country's 4G TD-LTE user base will likely touch 60 million; thereby accounting for 40 percent of TD-LTE users across the world.