China stands by own standard

April 27, 2005 - source: BWCS

The Chinese Government has confirmed that it plans to pull out all the stops to develop and promote the home-grown Chinese 3G standard, TD-SCDMA. Admittedly the platform from where the Minsirty of Information Industry executive was speaking may have influenced the strength of his support - he was addressing the 2005 TD-SCDMA International Summit in Beijing.

According to the China Daily website, Xu Guanhua, the Chinese minister of science and technology, told the summit "TD-SCDMA is accelerating its development and we are happy to see a wide range of international co-operation in that area." He went on, "We will continue to support TD-SCDMA and encourage more and more firms from home and abroad to join the development of the technology."

The minister's remarks were then echoed by a succession of government and industry speakers, all of whom reiterated their confidence in the system and their continued desire to support it.

This official backing has been taken as the strongest sign yet that at least one of the three proposed 3G licences in China will be reserved for the so far troublesome TD-SCDMA standard.

According to the Ministry of Information Industry's own 3G testing schedule, all next generation mobile phone-related testing will be concluded by the end of June. With TD-SCDMA the only standard in the trials which has not yet been deployed commercially, it clearly has a lot of ground to catch up. Previous trials showed that there were glitches in the system and officials have expressed concern that it will still be shown to be below par in these latest tests.

However, with rich pickings to be had in the Chinese market several western operators and manufacturers are keeping very close tabs on developments in the TD-SCDMA sphere, eager to jump in should the opportunity arise. Alcatel Shanghai Bell and Datang Mobile have already jointly demonstrated a live end-to-end TD-SCDMA solution.