It was reported that China Mobile would get the TD-SCDMA license while China Telecom and China Netcom will get theirs based on the WCDMA and CDMA2000 standards respectively.

The government hopes that by establishing the TD-SCDMA "test" network half to one year earlier than its other two rivals, the home-grown standard could have a better chance of succeeding in competing with WCDMA and CDMA2000, which were considered more mature.

However, the government's efforts to back the TD-SCDMA has long lacked support, especially from multinationals such as Nokia and Motorola, which were reluctant in releasing products based on the TD-SCDMA standard.

These companies have invested a lot in the other two standards and have already released related products.

The lack of support reached a climax in April when Kaiming Communication Co, one of the major TD-SCDMA chip production and research companies in China, went into bankruptcy after its shareholders such as Texas Instruments and Nokia had long been reluctant to continue their investment in the company.

After that, some news reports even said China's TD-SCDMA is in "Euthanasia", citing Li Shihe, former Datang Mobile chief scientist known as the "Father of TD-SCDMA".

Winds of change

Things have changed since one month ago, however, when China launched its new Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Li Yizhong, minister of MIIT, said in July that the government would fully support the TD-SCDMA standard as much as the country backed the Shenzhou program, China's human spaceflight project that sent one Chinese crewmember into space in 2003.

"(The) Chinese government has made the decision to fully support China's home-grown 3G standard at no cost," said Wang from China Galaxy Securities. "That has made it clear that TD-SCDMA will become successful in China without any doubt."

(China Daily July 31, 2008)