Foreign firms boost Chinese mobile phone standard
--From AOl.-- Cooters
BEIJING, Sept 22 (Reuters) - In a victory for China's telecommunications industry, two North American mobile phone makers announced support on Friday for a Chinese wireless technology that competes with European and U.S. standards.
Nortel Networks Corp of Canada and Motorola Inc of the United States said they joined four Chinese companies and Siemens AG of Germany in a consortium to promote worldwide use of the standard, TD-SCDMA.
TD-SCDMA, developed by Chinese government researchers and Siemens, is a technology designed to deliver advanced services to mobile phones, such as fast Internet access and movies.
While such services are at least two years away in China, the standards the country chooses to deliver them will have a big impact on the revenues of foreign telecoms companies in China, the world's second biggest mobile market.
European firms, such as Finland's Nokia Corp and Sweden's Ericsson, stand to earn royalties and fat contracts selling equipment based on another standard, WCDMA.
San Diego-based Qualcomm has been lobbying hard for China to adopt its standard, called cdma2000.
While the Chinese government and state-owned manufacturers stand to profit heavily from TD-SCDMA, it is still by no means certain the country's mobile service providers will adopt it.
Top mobile company China Mobile has said it favours WCDMA, while number two player China Unicom has signalled recently it may roll out a limited network based on Qualcomm's technology.
But the foreign support for TD-SCDMA is the strongest indication yet that the technology, once dismissed as a pipe dream, has a fighting chance against its more mature rivals.
``I think the technology has a reached a state where it's a viable technology that is being seriously considered by the Chinese operators,'' said Tom Chui, director of marketing for Nortel Networks in China.
``I think it's quite a significant milestone for the development of TD-SCDMA,'' he said.
Industry executives said the technology's weakness was that it faltered in fast-moving cars, but it could be more efficient and cheaper than its rivals when deployed in densely populated areas.
Besides Nortel, Motorola and Siemens, the TDS-CDMA consortium includes China Mobile, China Telecom, and Chinese equipment makers Datang Telecom and Huawei Technologies Co.
The forum was open to other members, and would meet each month to share technology and work out the details of the standard, which had yet to be finalised, Chui said.
Nortel and Motorola also support the European and Qualcomm standards.
08:01 09-22-00 |
