Pressure to support TD-SCDMA
August 13, 2002
China's telecom equipment developers are calling for concrete
government support for home-grown mobile telecom technology and
to rule out W-CDMA and cdma2000 in the mainland as it will be too
expensive.
The government's hesitation in choosing which standard it will
adopt in the coming age of 3G mobile communications is forcing developers
of China's 3G mobile technology to speak out.
"China should adopt a technology developed by domestic institutions
to avoid again becoming a battle field for overseas companies,"
said Li Shihe, chief scientist of the China Academy of Telecom Technology,
developer of the 3G TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division
multiple access) standard.
If China uses domestically developed technology, Chinese companies
will pay much lower patent fees than those they would pay to European
or American patent holders, Li explained.
The home-grown TD-SCDMA is up to international standards and has
been approved by the International Telecom Union (ITU).
"Adopting TD-SCDMA means business opportunities - worth hundreds
of billions of yuan - will be created for domestic companies," said
Li. "This is not a patriotic issue; it's a matter of hard cash."
In June a report in the press has quoted 'industry insiders' who
have claimed that Siemens along with its local partner, Datang,
has been given the go-ahead by the Chinese government to build a
TD-SCDMA 3G network, a technology developed jointly by the two.
Analysts believe that the 3G roll out in China would also depend
on which company will operate the new TD-SCDMA network, as China
Mobile is expected to opt for the GSM evolution to 3G and China
Unicom for its CDMA counterpart. There were claims that China Mobile
was interested in using TD-SCDMA in populated areas such as Shanghai.
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