TD-SCDMA, a Chinese home-grown standard for third-generation
(3G) mobile telephony, is set to dominate the country's 3G market,
an industry group said.
And foreign equipment and handset makers need to get more
involved in this locally developed standard or lose in the world's
largest mobile phone market by subscribers, said Chen Haofei,
secretary-general of TD-SCDMA Forum.
"I believe many foreign companies have misjudged (the prospects
of) TD-SCDMA," he told China Daily.
TD-SCDMA has long been lagging behind the better-established
foreign standards WCDMA and CDMA 2000 and lacking support from
foreign companies. But a strong backing from the government has
significantly helped it to mature and give it an edge over foreign
rivals.
China Mobile Communications Corp (CMCC), parent of Hong
Kong-listed China Mobile Ltd, is now expanding a trial of TD-SCDMA
to six cities from Xiamen in Fujian Province, with a budget of 30
billion yuan for the expansion. That's an indication of the head
start TD-SCDMA is getting.
The Chinese government has yet to formally award operators
licenses to build 3G networks. Once that happens, it will result in
billions of dollars in contracts.
Chen said the expanded TD-SCDMA trial is actually a soft launch
of commercial 3G in China, something like "doing it without
licensing".
Foreign telecom firms such as Ericsson and Nokia have been
betting big on WCDMA though they have tied up with some local
companies in developing TD-SCDMA.
But they have not won many orders from the trial as they did not
pool enough resources in developing the local standard, Chen
said.
China Unicom in 2001 started building a cellular network based
on CDMA, a 2G standard developed by US wireless firm Qualcomm.
Around 30 billion yuan was spent on the first phase of the
network.
Compared to CDMA, CMCC's spending on the TD-SCDMA trial is
already a "decent figure", said Chen.
He said he expected CMCC will focus on fine-tuning the TD-SCDMA
networks before the end of next year and not much investment will
be made on networks based on other foreign standards.
TD-SCDMA Forum forecast an additional investment of 20 billion
yuan in building TD-SCDMA networks next year, with 40 billion yuan
each in 2009 and 2010.
"Foreign companies need to get serious about TD-SCDMA as they
are less likely to get anywhere with WCDMA and CDMA 2000 in the
near future," Chen said.
He estimated CMCC will spend 4 billion yuan of the budgeted 30
billion yuan in procuring 2 million TD-SCDMA mobile phones from
around October.
Big foreign handset makers except Samsung have yet to give full
support to developing TD-SCDMA cellphones. Motorola has developed a
model based on the Chinese standard. Nokia and Sony Ericsson have
adopted a wait-and-see policy.
To profit from the opportunities brought about by TD-SCDMA,
"foreign companies need to show a good attitude, at least to get a
ticket to the TD-SCDMA game", said Chen, adding that TD-SCDMA is a
neutral and open platform.
The TD-SCDMA Forum was established in 2000 by eight firms,
including five Chinese companies and Motorola, Nortel Networks and
Siemens.
(China Daily May 17, 2007)