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January 23, 2006
China Approves a 3G Standard, Setting Stage to Issue Licenses
The Chinese Ministry of Information Industry's formally approved on Friday China's home grown 3G standard the TD-SCDMA. This approval removes an important obstacle in launching third-generation, or 3G, service in the world's biggest wireless market. There has been speculation in recent months that China has been delaying roll out of 3G services to give time for its own version to be ready.
The 3G service lets users send and receive data more quickly with their mobile phones, enabling video and high-speed Internet transmission and other fancy functions. Nortel Networks Corp., Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc., Huawei Technologies Co. and other big telecom-equipment makers have been eagerly anticipating China's decision to move forward with 3G, which is expected to yield billions of dollars in spending on network upgrades by the country's wireless carriers.
TD-SCDMA is part of a broad effort by Beijing to create increase local expertise and cut technology licensing related spending on imported technology. Foreign companies such as Siemens AG have helped the development of TD-SCDMA, but China's government and Chinese companies have taken the lead in promoting the technology. The two other 3G standards are WCDMA and CDMA2000.
Friday's statement, published on the Ministry of Information Industry's Web site, makes TD-SCDMA the first of the 3G standards to be formally approved in China.
Posted by admin at January 23, 2006 04:41 AM