China Ready To Make Money With Homebred 3G Standard TD-SCDMA

Ek Heng of Telecommunications Online writes that it is expected that China Mobile will receive a license for TD-SCDMA, a 3G standard developed by China, in order to be less dependent on foreign patent holders, avoid paying patent fees and trying to license it outside of China. The license for W-CDMA will probably go to China Unicom and China Telecom will get the CDMA2000 license.

Ek Heng writes: "Expenditure on 3G networks is seen by the Chinese government as one of the measures to offset the slowing economic growth. The rewards in terms of intellectual property that can accrue from the success of China’s TD-SCDMA will be massive and much attention will be focused on how it stands to the rigours of full commercial operation."

Read the article on Telecommunications Online here.

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China's Wish To Circumvent 3G Royalties Has Its Price

December 29, 2005 IP Dragon referred to China's efforts to come up with their own version of 3G telephony to avoid paying royalties to foreign patent right holders, see here.

According to the Economist of June 14th, China has committed itself to the International Olympic Comité (IOC) to have a “third generation” (3G) mobile-phone network available in time for the games. 3G will probably be available in time, although on a limited scale, according to the Economist.

The Economist offers some explanations why China does not choose to issue licences allowing China's operators to build 3G networks using one of the two international 3G technology standards (UMTS and CDMA2000).

"[..] Chinese bureaucrats have instead been pushing a proprietary Chinese standard, called TD-SCDMA, that could circumvent royalties to Western companies and enhance China's reputation for innovation. The development of this new technology has taken years and cost a fortune, but it is still not ready. The government does not want to issue the 3G licences until its home-grown technology is ready to compete with foreign standards. But the plan to establish TD-SCDMA as a global 3G standard and sell gear to other countries now seems doomed to fail."

Read the Economist article 'Telecoms in China, Olympic Hurdle' here.

Read more about China's efforts to come up with proprietary standards for Audio Video Coding, here, multi-channel digital radio coding and decoding, here, and RFID, here.

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