BEIJING - China will timely expand the trial scale for the nation's fourth-generation (4G) telecommunications technology -- TD-LTE, to speed up the sector's development, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Tuesday.

The statement came after the MIIT in February approved the second stage of the TD-LTE trial, during which the focus will be testing system equipment based on multi-mode chipsets that support a comprehensive range of telecommunications and data communication standards.

TD-LTE, or "Time Division-Long Term Evolution", can substantially lower bandwidth costs and allow faster broadband wireless services than the current 3G network.

The country will work to make breakthroughs in the sector's key technologies, narrow its gap with LTE FDD in Europe, and promote the technology to go global, MIIT Minister Miao Wei said.

China is the major promoter of the TD-LTE standard and a major owner of the standard's core patents. China Mobile Ltd, the country's largest wireless service provider, has been pushing for the TD-LTE to become a globally accepted standard.

As China's self-developed 3G TD-SCDMA standard has missed the opportunity to see large scale application outside the country, the TD-LTE equipment manufacturers and operators should join hands in grabbing a share in the global market, Miao said.

TD-SCDMA users have increased rapidly in the country over recent years. China Mobile alone saw 60 million TD-SCDMA users by the end of March.