Wednesday, December 08, 2004
[3G]Will China wait for TD-SCDMA?
Will China wait for TD-SCDMA?
November 15, 2004
One of the hot topics for many delegates at this week’s 3G World Congress will be the uncertain direction of China’s 3G plans, and the commercial fate of Chinese-developed 3G technology TD-SCDMA.
While China’s 3G timetable has always been a matter of guesswork and wishful thinking, announcements at a conference in Beijing last week raised both hopes and eyebrows.
Chen Jin-qiao, head of the MII’s Research Institute Telecom Policy Division, said that Chinese authorities believe 3G promises potential benefits for a wide range of related value chain industries. As such, the MII wants a 3G policy that will maximize benefits across the board, not just for a few companies.
Chen also said the MII had finished evaluating most of the technical issues, and is now focused on assessing the market impact of 3G and hashing out variables such as interconnection, inter-network roaming and network sharing.
One eyebrow-raiser was the MII’s revelation that TD-SCDMA had failed in several key areas after a series of tests, indicating it was far from ready for commercial deployment. Problems cited included unstable networks, an unreliable core network, and a dearth of compatible handsets with which to test the system.
That said, the MII still says it will continue to back TD-SCDMA, but this has raised the question of whether it will wait until TD-SCDMA is ready before issuing any 3G licenses.
Late last week, the China Academy of Telecommunications Research proposed three separate 3G networks for China – one each for W-CDMA, cdma2000 and TD-SCDMA – with the added recommendation that the government wait for TD-SCDMA technology to be improved before issuing 3G licenses.
Chen speculated that part of TD-SCDMA’s problems was the lack of strong foreign participation in its development.
The same day, Alcatel Shanghai Bell and Datang Mobile announced a partnership to drive TD-SCDMA development.
In response to queries from the 3G Show Daily about the TD-SCDMA results, Alcatel reaffirmed its belief in TD-SCDMA in a statement, saying the company was “confident that TD-SCDMA terminals will soon be widely available,” and that it expects the first TD-SCDMA products from its Datang partnership to be delivered to the Chinese market by June 2005.
November 15, 2004
One of the hot topics for many delegates at this week’s 3G World Congress will be the uncertain direction of China’s 3G plans, and the commercial fate of Chinese-developed 3G technology TD-SCDMA.
While China’s 3G timetable has always been a matter of guesswork and wishful thinking, announcements at a conference in Beijing last week raised both hopes and eyebrows.
Chen Jin-qiao, head of the MII’s Research Institute Telecom Policy Division, said that Chinese authorities believe 3G promises potential benefits for a wide range of related value chain industries. As such, the MII wants a 3G policy that will maximize benefits across the board, not just for a few companies.
Chen also said the MII had finished evaluating most of the technical issues, and is now focused on assessing the market impact of 3G and hashing out variables such as interconnection, inter-network roaming and network sharing.
One eyebrow-raiser was the MII’s revelation that TD-SCDMA had failed in several key areas after a series of tests, indicating it was far from ready for commercial deployment. Problems cited included unstable networks, an unreliable core network, and a dearth of compatible handsets with which to test the system.
That said, the MII still says it will continue to back TD-SCDMA, but this has raised the question of whether it will wait until TD-SCDMA is ready before issuing any 3G licenses.
Late last week, the China Academy of Telecommunications Research proposed three separate 3G networks for China – one each for W-CDMA, cdma2000 and TD-SCDMA – with the added recommendation that the government wait for TD-SCDMA technology to be improved before issuing 3G licenses.
Chen speculated that part of TD-SCDMA’s problems was the lack of strong foreign participation in its development.
The same day, Alcatel Shanghai Bell and Datang Mobile announced a partnership to drive TD-SCDMA development.
In response to queries from the 3G Show Daily about the TD-SCDMA results, Alcatel reaffirmed its belief in TD-SCDMA in a statement, saying the company was “confident that TD-SCDMA terminals will soon be widely available,” and that it expects the first TD-SCDMA products from its Datang partnership to be delivered to the Chinese market by June 2005.
# posted by MiDBA @ 12/08/2004 05:05:00 PM 
