Datang in dispute with Qualcomm over 3G patent
December 6, 2002
Datang, wanting to waive royalties for its TD-SCDMA standard, has
rejected Qualcomm's claim to intellectual property of the technology.
Zhou Huan, chairman of Datang, said TD-SCDMA uses a lot of core
IPR that was actually developed by the Chinese themselves and does
not use Qualcomm technology.
The statement could start a legal battle that would determine whether
Chinese companies would be obligated to pay royalty fees for the
3G technology.
Siemens and Datang, developers of TD-SCDMA, says the technology
is more spectrum efficient than its two rival technologies, WCDMA
and cdma2000. They also say it is at least 20% cheaper to implement
and has higher data transfer rates.
The Chinese government has allocated favourable bandwidth for TD-SCDMA,
showing its strong support and optimism for the home grown technology.
Speculations have even hinted that the Chinese government would
force future 3G operators to adopt the new standard, but was later
dismissed by government officials.
To date, Qualcomm says it has licensed TD-SCDMA-based technology
to more than 40 companies. None have been Chinese firms.
Even though operators have not said they would deploy TD-SCDMA
networks, some equipment manufactures have said they would support
TD-SCDMA incase the technology is chosen for commercial use.
Datang urge the Chinese government to throw its weight behind the
TD-SCDMA standard and avoid competing foreign technologies. Mr Zhou
said Beijing should follow Europe's example in developing its GSM
standard and champion a home-grown version of the high-speed wireless
technology that is expected to dominate future mobile telephony.
"As the United States government supports the CDMA standard and
Europe supports GSM, our government should back TD-SCDMA," Mr Zhou
said.
|
3G Motorola A920
