China issues 16,000 Network Accessing License

February 1, 2007

China has issued Network Accessing License to 16,000 mobile phones made based on TD-SCDMA standard, and the models of mobile phones under this standard has reached 17 ones, revealed He Guili, director of China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL).

These 16,000 mobile phones labeled with the license mark will be ready for use for the experimental TD-SCDMA network in four pilot cities, but He did not detail how many would be attributed in each of the four cities.

Along with WCDMA and CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA is one of the three international standards for the third-generation of telecommunications, or 3G, which is developed with the initiative of Chinese companies and therefore in which China has a considerable portion of intellectual property rights.

China has not yet decided which standard to be adopted for the country's next generation telecom, and before issuing the 3G licenses nationwide, it is now conducting an experimental running of the network based on TD-SCDMA standard in Beijing, Shanghai, the eastern city of Qingdao and the northern city Baoding.

Corresponding with the entire network building, the other segments of the sector, including chips, terminals and instruments, have all been actively involved in the development of TD-SCDMA-mode products.

In the aspect of terminals, as early as in June last year, ZTE, Datang and Huawei, which are all major telecom equipments manufactures in China, have already obtained the network accessing licenses for their first batch of TD-SCDMA mobile phones.

However, the majority of the licensed TD-SCDMA handsets so far are ones capable of supporting only TD-SCDMA mode, and only Shenzhen-based ZTE presented a model which is compliant with both TD-SCDMA and the current GSM network.

The model can also support dual stand-by function, enabling users to put a call on hold in one mode and take a separate call on the other mode, and then switch between TD-SCDMA and GSM modes, ZTE said.

According to experts, it requires highly technically to realize TD-SCDMA /GSM dual-module, dual-stand-by function: it has to solve a bunch of problems related to terminal development, such as radio-frequency interference between TD- SCDMA and GSM network, mainboard inner space design, antenna position adjustment, and circuit design.

Finally, such a handset must pass the demanding network test carried by the mobile operator before getting the accessing license.

Therefore, ZTE's TD-SCDMA /GSM dual-module handset is seen as a symbolic technical upgrade of TD-SCDMA terminals, because the 2G and 3G network will inevitably co-exist in the future, so the dual-module terminals are expected to see a huge market demands, especially from medium-high-end users.

So far, ZTE has developed two models of such dual-module handsets, U350 and U80, the company said, and it is planning to launch more such modes, betting that the dual-module, dual- stand-by handset will be the biggest winner in the future TD- SCDMA terminal field.

Besides ZTE, Shenzhen-based YuLong, who is the country's first handset maker launching the GSM/CDMA dual-module handset, also has developed a TD-SCDMA /GSM dual-module model 6260, and has showed it at last year's ITU Telecom World held in Hong Kong.

But He declined to reveal whether this model has been granted Network Accessing License by CTTL.