China Cell-Phone Standard Reportedly Ready
Jan 6, 10:51 AM (ET)
BEIJING (AP) - China's homegrown standard for next-generation cell phone services is ready for use, possibly paving the way for wireless operators to begin upgrading the nation's wireless networks after a lengthy delay, a newspaper reported Friday.
The report by the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily didn't say when 3G licenses might be issued to Chinese and foreign phone producers or whether the new system was able to support as many features as competing standards.
Third-generation wireless systems are designed to move data faster to cell phones and other mobile devices, allowing Web surfing and downloads of music, video and other content.
Tests last June reportedly concluded that China's proposed standards could only support simple functions such as calls and text messages.
But the People's Daily reported Friday that China's TD-SCDMA technology has reached a stage where it can be used to offer 3G services.
"China has been able to produce the desired result of the TD-SCDMA standard in a short time," said a Ministry of Information Industry official, quoted by the newspaper.
"Compared with Europe and the United States, we are relatively late in creating our standard and our investment is far smaller," said the official, whose name wasn't given.
China, the world's biggest cell phone market with 350 million users, chose to develop its own system in order to avoid having to pay for foreign technology. The People's Daily said China has received patents for the TD-SCDMA technology in the United States, Japan, and other countries. It did not give any details.
Makers of telecommunications equipment have waited years for China to let service providers start building 3G networks, which Beijing has postponed while it tried to develop its own standard. The government has said it wants to have 3G services available before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Executives at equipment companies have said in recent months they expect 3G licenses to be issued in the first half of this year.
TD-SCDMA means Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access. It is a competitor to WCDMA, the dominant standard in Europe, and CDMA 2000, a technology used in South Korea and by several large operators in the United States.
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