Market to decide mainland 3G standards
REUTERS in Beijing
OLD NEWS?
Published on Tuesday, September 26, 2000
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Updated at 5.48pm, Tuesday:
The Chinese government will let mobile phone companies decide for themselves which technologies they use to provide future-generation wireless services and will not impose a unified standard, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The comment by Lou Qinjian, Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, is welcome news for foreign equipment vendors worried that Beijing might force the market to adopt a homegrown standard that rivals US and European standards.
''Companies ought to determine it for themselves,'' Mr Lou said on the sidelines of a conference on next-generation wireless technology.
''The Ministry of Information Industry requires only that they choose common international standards,'' he said. ''As for which standard an operator chooses specifically, that is for the market to determine.''
Future, or so-called ''third generation'', wireless technologies are designed to deliver ingenious new services to mobile phones, such as high-speed Internet access and video conferencing.
Some markets in Europe and Asia are poised to begin rolling out third-generation phone networks as early as next year, using a patchwork of competing technical standards.
Strong contenders include WCDMA, which has the backing of several European and North American equipment makers, and cdma2000, which is being pushed by US-based Qualcomm Inc.
But the Chinese government, with help from Siemens AG of Germany, has put considerable money and effort into developing its own standard, called TD-SCDMA.
If TD-SCDMA is adopted by phone companies, state-owned Chinese equipment makers would stand to earn hefty sums from royalties and equipment contracts.
In a boost for the standard, foreign equipment makers Motorola and Nortel Networks announced last week they would help the mainland develop TD-SCDMA. The firms are also developing WCDMA and cdma2000 technology.
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