DS,
<< China commits to CDMA technology >>
OK. ... Cheryl (?) Casone (?) says Chinese Minister really meant "narrowband" CDMA, not "wideband" CDMA all along.
Here are 2 other (very confusing) interpretations of events out of China published yesterday:
>> CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW - NEW NETWORK STANDARDS
Asia Intelligence Wire
China Economic Review
09/11/2000
The State Development Planning Commission plans to spend Yn5.3bn (US$640m) to facilitate initial development of third generation (3G) mobile networks, a senior official at the Ministry of Information Industries was quoted by South China Morning Post as saying. The government would consider both political and technological issues when deciding which system to adopt. A basic system test would be completed by the end of this year, with Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) traffic beginning in 2002. In future, both WCDMA and a Chinese-developed TD/SCDMA system could be used in parallel. The official forecast that 3G would occupy about half of China's mobile phone market by 2010. <<
>> CHINA ECONOMIC REVIEW - UNICOM CHANGES PLAN ON CDMA
Asia Intelligence Wire
China Economic Review
09/11/2000
China Unicom, the country's second largest telecoms company, clarified earlier reports that it was not going to build a national CDMA network, by saying that it had decided to migrate its planned narrow-band system to the third generation standard, Business Weekly reported.
Last year Unicom was authorised by the State Council to build and operate a CDMA network. Following an agreement on licensing with US-based Qualcomm, it had planned to start providing current generation narrowband CDMA services this year. However, a Unicom spokesman was quoted as saying that the company now thought the timing of the investment of more than Yn100bn (US$12bn) in a national network with a designed capacity of 50m lines was unfavourable and it decided to build a 'wideband CDMA 2000 network'.
Unicom's announcement meant that the only Chinese CDMA network currently in operation belongs to Great Wall Telecom, which has trial systems in four cities. The newspaper described Great Wall as 'militarily-supported' and said that it would eventually be allocated to Unicom.
A later report in South China Morning Post said that, besides Qualcomm's CDMA 2000 standard, Unicom was looking at alternatives including the WCDMA standard developed from the basic Qualcomm CDMA system by a coalition of telecoms companies and compatible with the GSM system. <<
Wake me when it's over, and contracts are in hand, please.
- Eric - |
