NDRC proposes four 3G licenses in China

November 28, 2004

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has recommended to the State Council to issue four 3G telecommunication licenses in China.

It also suggested that two of the licenses should go to the two main fixed-line operators, China Telecom and China Netcom, to use the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard despite the poor performance of the technology in the latest rounds of tests.

The leading mobile providers, China Mobile and China Unicom, should each get a license to deploy WCDMA and CDMA2000 technologies respectively

The Chinese government organised tests for all three 3G technologies but admitted that TD-SCDMA was far from ready and offers poor performance compared to CDMA2000 and WCDMA. The government testers found that there were too few handsets compatible with the TD-SCDMA system and the networks tended to be unstable and the core network unreliable. It said the two western standards passed the tests and are clearly ready for use.

Although TD-SCDMA backers claimed that handsets and infrastructure would be commercially ready by the middle of next year, industry experts and analysts remain sceptical of the technology's performance.

The awarding of 3G licenses in China could be pushed back even further to allow time for TD-SCDMA to be ready and would most certainly upset equipment manufacturers in the west.