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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (21645)	4/22/2002 2:23:10 PM
From: Dennis Roth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197544

Telecoms minister says 3G faces obstacles in China totaltele.com By Reuters staff 22 April 2002 Official sees need for more applications to drive 3G growth. An apathetic market and a dearth of strong applications are to blame for China's slow approach to building third generation (3G) mobile networks, the country's top telecoms official said on Monday. "We're not delaying 3G, it's just a question of whether or not the market is ready for it," said Wu Jichuan, head of China's telecoms regulator, the Ministry of Information Industry. Wu jokingly compared 3G service, which would allow cellphones to transfer data at ten times the speed of current phones, to space tourism as an example of something that is physically possible but that very few can afford. Although more than 156 million cellular subscribers make China the world's biggest mobile market, most are low-spending users, giving China's cellular carriers cause to weigh heavily the risks of building expensive 3G networks. "The delay of 3G is not a technological delay. The technology is ready and most of the pieces are in place. But in the area of services and applications, there is still some work to be done," Wu said on the sidelines of an industry conference. Wu gave no details on when China's cellular carriers, China Mobile Communications Corp and China Unicom Group, would invest in 3G networks. But many analysts say the service will not be ready for subscribers until 2004. Chinese and foreign telecoms vendors have grown anxious for the carriers to invest in 3G and take up the slack after mobile network spending in the country cooled for the first time in several years. China Mobile (HK) Ltd and China Unicom Ltd, the two Hong Kong-listed units of China's cellular firms, cut spending plans this year by 17 percent and 30 percent respectively. And 3G has been slow to fill in the gap in China and abroad. Nokia, the world's top cellphone maker, said last week the rollout of 3G networks in 2002 was proceeding at a slower than expected pace due to a change in operators' strategy. Japan's NTT DoCoMo, which launched 3G service using the wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) standard last October, said the service had 89,000 users by the end of March, less than the 150,000 it had expected. Wu also questioned the focus of some applications already on the market in other countries. If children had access to super-fast mobile games, "parents would have a harder time making sure their children finished their schoolwork," said Wu, who in 1999 voiced concern about letting content deemed "unhealthy" into China via the Internet. Wu was quoted by official news agency Xinhua on Monday as saying that in addition to a lack of applications, a broadband bottleneck and a lack of core technologies would be China's chief high-technology hurdles over the next five to 10 years 157