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3G standard ready in a year: official
Georgina Lee

China will be ready for a full commercial launch of its homegrown TD-SCDMA mobile phone standard by next June, a senior official at the Ministry of Information Industry said yesterday.

``Right now, everything from the chips to the handset to the base stations has been tested successfully,'' the official, Zhang Qi, said in Beijing, according to a Reuters report. ``I'm very confident that by June 2005, we will successfully launch a completely domestically made [TD-SCDMA] handset. The launch won't cause mobile operators to have to delay construction of their 3G networks.'' Chips developed for the TD-SCDMA phone were ready in April, Zhang said, while the mobile phones would all be dual-mode, so they could run on TD-SCDMA and either the CDMA2000 or WCDMA standards.

``In May or June of 2005, China will launch at least five to six cellphone models based on TD-SCDMA with homegrown chips,'' she said.

Zhang's comments are at odds with a recent forecast by investment bank Goldman Sachs that a commercial roll-out of third generation (3G) mobile service in China may not begin until as late as 2007. Goldman based its forecast on recent meetings with operators, vendors, government representative and academics. It said the central government will only start licensing around mid-2005 at the earliest.

``Timing for 3G in China remains elusive, and the list of issues [to be addressed] is getting longer,'' said Goldman analyst Tim Storey in a report issued this week. The 2007 commercial roll-out time-line assumes a 12-18 months network construction lead time.

If Goldman's estimation is in line, it would mean that China will lag behind Japan by at least six years in the roll out of the service. Mobile giant NTT DoCoMo commercialised its full 3G mobile services, FOMA, in October 2001, a service that was initially full of glitches but which has recently taken off to register more than three million users since March.

Elsewhere, leading the commercialisation of WCDMA 3G service is Hutchison Whampoa, which has already started operations in seven markets worldwide to offer the service which allows for video streaming, Web-browsing and telephone conferencing.

Goldman said that the delay in China is caused by several issues that Beijing still has to consider before awarding licences to operators. For now, the government is still sizing up market demand for 3G services and assessing the maturity of 3G technologies.

Much has been reported that China will likely issue licences allowing all three different technologies: its home-grown TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000 (code division multiple access) and WCDMA (wideband CDMA).

Meanwhile, Beijing Morning Post reported yesterday that China Telecom Corp, parent of Hong Kong-listed China Telecom, is talking with up to seven mobile phone makers about buying one billion yuan (HK$942.6 million) worth of WCDMA handsets as early as August.

23 June 2004 / 02:02 AM

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