The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved Qingdao and 9 other cities to conduct large-scale Time Division Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) trials, according to the Qingdao Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology.

A spokesman of the Qingdao branch of China Mobile said that all the buses in Qingdao will be equipped with 4G network technology by the first half of 2013. Mobile phone users can enjoy a data speed transfer rate of 100 megabits per second when taking buses.

4G is the fourth generation of wireless and mobile communication with much faster data speeds than the previous version, 3G.