Qualcomm in Talks with China Carriers on 3G
Wed February 26, 2003 03:44 AM ET
reuters.com
BEIJING (Reuters) - Telecoms technology giant Qualcomm Inc. QCOM.O said on Wednesday it was meeting with carriers China Telecom CHA.N 0728.HK and China Netcom about adopting its 3G standard in next-generation mobile services.
Fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom are expected to receive mobile licenses late this year or in early 2004, allowing them to enter the lucrative business and compete with China Unicom 0762.HK and China Mobile 0941.HK .
"We've held informal discussions with them at various levels of officials," Irwin Jacobs, Qualcomm's chairman and chief executive, told reporters in response to a question.
"I think they will go ahead with CDMA," he said, referring to the code division multiple access standard which Qualcomm developed.
Jacobs said the talks were still in the early stages.
The San Diego, California-based firm licenses the CDMA technology and makes more than 90 percent of chips used in such phones.
Analysts say that although China's next-generation mobile services may not be commercially available until 2004 at the earliest, the country's four biggest telecoms carriers are positioning themselves to enter the market for high-speed Internet-enabled wireless service.
China Mobile, China's dominant mobile operator, would likely continue to offer a European-developed technology while China Unicom would stick with a Qualcomm-based standard when both roll out 3G services, they say.
China Telecom and China Netcom, as yet uncommitted to any technology, could adopt either of the two standards or support a homegrown standard called TD-SCDMA, possibly in tandem with one of the other technologies.
Qualcomm announced it would set up a technology joint venture with China Unicom, which aggressively promotes its own CDMA-based mobile service, to develop wireless data applications.
The venture had an initial investment of tens of millions of yuan and might seek a stock listing in the future, company officials said.
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