TD-SCDMA models
China Mobile has cut the cost for its trial 3G services to near fixed-line phone rates to try and attract business, families and students.
China Mobile will gradually launch new packages, with the top rate cut of more than 50%, in the coming year. This is pretty official because China Mobile published a statement to this effect on the Website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The new packages will be available in ten cities with TD-SCDMA (time division-synchronous code division multiple access) networks including Beijing and Shanghai. The carrier has chosen Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Tianjin as the first cities with the new packages.
In the new business package, China Mobile will offer users 500 minutes of calls for RMB30, compared with the previous RMB88 600 minutes.
The TD-SCDMA rate is RMB 0.22 for first three minutes call and RMB 0.11 for following minute, lower than China Mobile’s 2G rate and similar to China Telecom’s fixed-phone rate.
Sandy Shen, a Shanghai-based analyst at Gartner Inc, a US-based IT research firm said, ‘It’s nice to have the cut rate but the key problem is the handset.’
Fewer than 10 TD-SCDMA models are available in the market though China Mobile said more handset makers are developing new models.
Source: Shanghai Daily