Shenzhen Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., one of China's leading telecommunication equipment manufacturers, and Siemens Mobile signed a contract Thursday to build a joint-venture to develop telecommunications products based on the TD-SCDMA standard.

Over US$100 million will be injected into the project. Siemens will hold a 51 percent stake and Huawei 49 percent. Insiders believe the move will help promote application of the TD-SCDMA standard in China. Now 300 staff have begun to work for the joint venture, with 200 of them from Siemens Mobile and 100 from Huawei.

Under the contract, the joint-venture will provide wireless equipment designed in compliance with the TD-SCDMA standard within this year.

The TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) standard is the first Chinese standard adopted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Third Generation Partnership Project.

Submitted by Datang Telecom Technology and Industry Group to the ITU on behalf of China, the standard has become one of the three dominant standards of third generation mobile (3G) telecommunications systems, along with WCDMA (wideband CDMA) in Europe and Japan and CDMA in the United States.

Third generation phones offer an Internet connection rate eight times faster than dial-up access.

Siemens would join with Huawei to make TD-SCDMA a success in the Chinese market, said Lothar Pauly, chief operating officer and member of the board of Siemens Information and Communication Mobile (Siemens Mobile).

Pooling TD-SCDMA technology would effectively cut research and development expenses for both sides, said Sun Yafang, chairman of Shenzhen Huawei Technology Co. Ltd.

(Xinhua News Agency February 12, 2004)