STMicro says it has TD-SDMA indemnity from Datang
Peter Clarke, 22-Jan-2003
cmpnetasia.com
STMicroelectronics, which recently announced a 3G intellectual property licensing agreement with China's Datang Mobile Communications Equipment concerning has said it is not concerned over a disagreement that broke out between Datang and Qualcomm Inc. late in 2002, because Datang has agreed to indemnify the company.
Datang has been working with Siemens AG to develop the Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) and promoting its use as a standard within China.
In November Qualcomm asserted that all air-interfaces based on Code Division Multiple Access incorporate Qualcomm technology. Shortly after, Zhou Huan, chairman of Datang Telecom Technology Co. Ltd., said: “TD-SCDMA does not use Qualcomm technology and we welcome Qualcomm to contact us to negotiate.”
In response to a question about any impact the dispute might have on the ST deal with Datang, Kay Das, research and development director for STMicroelectronics' Asia-Pacific region said: “ST is indemnified by Datang,” and added that STMicroelectronics had access to all the intellectual property it needs to make chips for TD-SCDMA, which would be an important 3G standard.
“The 3G mobile market in China will be an important one. In China 46% of 3G spectrum is allocated to TD-SCDMA and the remaining 54% shared between WCDMA and CDMA2000. We have great confidence in the future of TD-SCDMA. TD-SCDMA, is accepted by ITU-T and 3GPP as one of the three mainstream international standards for 3G mobile communications, and is fully compatible with the requirements for advancement, standardization and as open technology. The China government has allocated 155MHz of spectrum to TD-SCDMA. We believe that TD-SCDMA offers operators a smooth hardware and software upgrade, as well as offering better spectrum efficiency of utilization. It is a young technology which requires increased investments, such as that which ST is prepared to make,” Das said.
It may be that ST has additional licenses or cross-licenses in place, by virtue of its work with Nokia and other companies on the European variant of the wideband-CDMA air interface, or even direct bi-lateral agreements with Qualcomm.
“ST does not wish to disclose any further license agreements in this area at this time, beyond what was announced on Thursday [January 16, 2003]” a spokeswoman for the company said.
The Beijing T3G Technology Company., a TD-SCDMA chip design venture formed by Datang Mobile Communications, Royal Philips Electronics, and Samsung Electronics Co., may be able to lean on licenses in place at Samsung, a long-time collaborator with Qualcomm, notwithstanding Datang's assertion that the TD-SCDMA air interface does not use any Qualcomm technology. |
