(China) State Council given 3G options
Elaine Chan
24 January 2003 / 01:49 AM
As competition boils among mainland mobile operators, Chinese experts charged with planning how to roll out the country's third-generation (3G) mobile communication services have submitted three options to the State Council for consideration.
In their submission, reported on the influential Chinese website Homeway, the experts proposed regulators hand out four 3G licences - to current mobile duopoly China Mobile and China Unicom, and to fixed-line operators China Telecom and China Netcom.
One of the three proposed plans would leave operators complete freedom in choosing which 3G standard to use, embracing the principles of a market economy.
The second option would be to award licences for the home-grown TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code-division multiple access) technology to newcomer mobile operators China Telecom and China Netcom, while China Mobile and China Unicom would adopt foreign-developed WCDMA and CDMA2000 standards respectively.
The third way would not restrict China Telecom and China Netcom to any one standard, but both operators would have to guarantee they would adopt TD- SCDMA in certain areas or districts as the main network system.
By developing TD-SCDMA, China, which has lagged behind the West on the high-tech front, aims to hold its own as the government further liberalises the telecom industry.
TD-SCDMA is being developed by Beijing-backed Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group, which holds the patent to the standard approved by the International Telecom Union as one of the three wireless interface specifications, next to WCDMA and CDMA2000.
Given that the TD-SCDMA technology is costing the mainland millions of yuan to develop, it is not in Beijing's interest to accept the first proposed plan that would allow operators complete freedom to choose their preferred standards.
Datang said late last year that the TD-SCDMA could be available for commercial use in mid-2004. The mainland, the world's biggest cellular market, has been guarded in deregulating its rapidly growing mobile communication industry, to protect its own and for fear of uncontrollable chaos.
Already, China Mobile and China Unicom are embroiled in an escalating war to raise user numbers through subsidies and aggressive pricing, to the extent of violating regulations to introduce a one-party charge in certain areas.
In addition, fixed-line operators China Telecom and China Netcom have expanded their personal handyphone service (PHS) to more cities in the mainland, giving both mobile operators a run for their money.
thestandard.com.hk
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LOL!
When will the cold, hard reality finally sink in that TDsCDMA, one of 2 TDD technologies ( UTRA-TDD is the other) developed in 3GPP, designed specifically for the efficient asymmetric transmission of data using shorter distance micro and pico cells, is not a viable candidate to replace FDD technologies for macro cell voice+data networks? (Voice is a symmetric transmission service requiring low latency and high Quality of Service.)
Message 18434437
When will the cold, hard reality finally sink in that no China carrier could rationally select, or be forced to use, TDsCDMA for its primary network standard?
Is this why Telecom stated that it would give back a TDsCDMA license upon receipt?
Message 18465698 |
