Seems this analyst shares your view on GSM in China. This from the April 26th issue.
wirelessweek.com
China CDMA Policy Called 'Posturing'
By Owen Hughes
HONG KONG--China's decision to permit code division multiple access technology is merely "posturing," a telecommunications analyst warned.
ABN-AMRO Asia research analyst Joe Locke said that Beijing had seemingly embraced CDMA as part of its overall trade policy with the United States, including its attempt to gain membership of the World Trade Organization.
In the weeks since China's State Council made its decision on CDMA last month, Motorola Inc. and Lucent Technologies Inc. each completed contracts valued at $20 million. The official Chinese news agency Xinhua said that Beijing Posts and Telecommunications Administration would buy CDMA equipment from Motorola to build 35 base stations. The report added that Lucent had signed a draft contract with Guangdong Cellular Telecom, a subsidiary of China Telecom, to supply equip-ment to expand the number of base stations in the southern province to 45.
But Locke warned that the $40 million in orders doesn't compare to the $4 billion worth of global system for mobile communications technology China ordered in 1998. "It does not make sense for China to have competing technologies. You already have more than 20 million people using [GSM]. I remain very skeptical about this," Locke said, suggesting China was "posturing" to win trade concessions.
Locke added that it made little practical sense to embrace narrowband CDMA technology when it would be outdated in three years.
Questions also remained about which national network would roll out CDMA. China Unicom has conducted CDMA trials in four citiesBeijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian. Great Wall has been a proponent of the technology, partly because the People's Liberation Army-owned company can access the military's frequencies in areas where CDMA is used.
Yet China Unicom remains the poor relation to dominant player China Telecom, and Locke said that the U.S. government will be reluctant to sell technology to a PLA company. Complicating the issue further, China's military last year was told to dump its commercial operations, and its status remains unclear.
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