Official: China to spend $40b on 3G

Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong said China will spend US$40 billion on third-generational (3G) mobile communications networks over the next two years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Li said China would provide "strong support" to TD-SCDMA, a 3G standard developed in China, suggesting that domestic firms may benefit more from the spending than their international counterparts. Earlier in December, Li announced that China would award 3G mobile telecom licenses in early 2009; China Mobile will operate a TD-SCDMA network, while China Unicom and China Telecom will operate WCDMA and CDMA2000 networks, respectively.