What a croque all this is...The poor Chinese will have to suffer with CDMA in exchange for WTO entry..Somebody knows how to negotiate over there...
ft.com
China to accept US mobile phone standard
By James Kynge in Beijing
China is planning to offer a key trade concession to Washington by opening its domestic market to the US mobile phone standard CDMA, raising the prospect of billions of dollars in exports for American companies. An announcement of Beijing's plans to allow the nationwide provision of CDMA (Code division multiple access) systems is expected around the time that Zhu Rongji, the Chinese premier, visits the US in April.
A Chinese telecoms official cautioned, however, that the announcement could be withheld if Mr Zhu encountered hostility in Washington.
"It depends somewhat on America's attitude. It would be very difficult to grant a concession while they are restricting technology exports to China and accusing us of spying," said the official. European mobile equipment manufacturers, such as Ericsson, Nokia, and Siemens, which produce the GSM standard that currently dominates China's mobile market, stand to lose if permission for CDMA is granted.
Under the plan, China Unicom, the country's second state-owned carrier, would be awarded China's first nationwide CDMA licence this year, the official said.
The company has drawn up an ambitious schedule that envisages 40m subscribers by 2003 - requiring capital investment in excess of $10bn.
Since China does not make CDMA technology, US equipment suppliers such as Motorola, Lucent Technologies and Nortel, as well as Samsung, the Korean manufacturer, would see their sales soar in the world's fastest-growing mobile telephone market. China's mobile subscriber base, currently at around 25m, is growing at a rate of 1m a month. Another beneficiary would be Qualcomm, which developed the technology on which CDMA is based.
"We are talking in terms of building the biggest CDMA market in the world," said one Unicom executive who recently visited a Lucent Technologies outlet in China with a view to buying equipment. From a domestic point of view, the adoption of CDMA makes sense on a number of levels, Chinese officials said.
First, it could help reduce friction over China's trade surplus with the US, which climbed to $57bn last year.
Second, it could provide a much-needed boost to domestic demand, and third, it would allow Unicom to provide some real competition to China Telecom, an inefficient leviathan known to have incurred the criticism of Mr Zhu. |
