China Should Continue to Develop CDMA, Cellular Expert Says
chinaonline.com
(3/17/1999) The following is an analysis of wireless operating
standards for China, published in the March 9 Zhongguo
Dianzi Bao (China Electronics News). The author is Zheng
Zhuhui, secretary of China's Telecom Society, and a senior
engineer at the Number 61 Research Institute of the General
Staff (a military institution):
Although CDMA IS-95 is gaining popularity as a cellular
operating platform worldwide, China has been slow to develop
it. The army and the former Ministry of Post and Telecom
established experimental CDMA networks in four cities in
1996, but after three years, those networks remain at the
experimental stage. [China announced a moratorium on all
CDMA-backed wireless platforms on February 23—Ed.]
The four networks, established in Guanzhou, Beijing,
Shanghai and Xi'an, opened for commercial traffic in the
second half of 1997. All four, which make up the Great Wall
network, received a satisfactory evaluation at the end of the
year.
However, China's CDMA network has been stalled since
1998. One reason for this may be a report submitted by
researchers at the China Engineering Academy at the end of
1997, which proposed deferring construction of commercial
CDMA networks for three years. The rationale was that this
would give domestic telecom equipment manufacturers time
to develop equipment that operated on the CDMA standard.
At the end of 1997 all CDMA equipment for the networks
would have been imported from foreign manufacturers.
Reforms within the government have also affected the
development of CDMA networks.
China should continue developing CDMA-supported networks,
however, because they allow a higher carrying capacity than
GSM-based networks. GSM is the second generation cellular
operating standard that is most widespread in China.
Some analysts have argued that GSM networks put China in
a better position to exploit third generation cell phone
standards. This is not the case, however. Strong proposals to
the International Telecom Union (the Geneva-based
organization charged with establishing a uniform
third-generation cell phone operating standard
worldwide—Ed.) have been made for both WCDMA (the
successor to GSM) and CMA2000 (the successor to current
CDMA platforms).
Besides, a worldwide international cell phone operating
standard remains too far in the future for it to dictate what
second-generation systems China should be investing in now.
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