China Telecom Corp Ltd, the third-largest telecom carrier in the country, officially started its TD-LTE 4G project on Friday despite a failure to yet attain a FDD-LTE standard license, in a move to compete with its leading rival China Mobile Ltd in the early stage of the new era.

The rate standards, which are in line with those China Mobile unveiled a month ago, provide users seven different pricing plans ranging from 70 yuan for 1 gigabyte to 280 yuan/10 GB per month.

The company also offers a six-month contract of 300 yuan/6GB and a one-year package of 600 yuan/12GB.

China Telecom's 4G services would cover more than 100 cities around the country but only for wireless network cards rather than handsets, as the giant is still waiting for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to issue its long-awaited license to build an FDD-LTE network, which is more globally accepted than the home-grown TD-LTE standard.

The move left China Unicom, the second-largest carrier in China planning for FDD-LTE, as the only Telco that has not launched a 4G service among the three majors that received TD-LTE licenses at the end of 2013.

Huang Yufan contributed to the story.