Electronic Engineering Times has published a major attack on TD-SCDMA.
(Before accepting it at its face value it should be remembered that significant royalties would have flowed from China to the United States if TD-SCDMA had NOT been mandated by the Chinese government. This home version does not pay royalties to American companies)
The article states that ‘if there was ever a standard that should never have come to be, it’s time-division, synchronous code-division multiple access (TD-SCDMA).’ The article thinks that it will fade away after the Olympics.
It adds: ‘Unless, of course, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) continues to ram the standard down the throat of a reluctant China Mobile, while at the same time further delaying the issuance of licenses for the third-generation cellular technologies the rest of the world is using: wideband CDMA and 
cdma2000. Such a delay would give TD-SCDMA the breathing room it needs to overcome certain technical hurdles and extend its coverage.’
A phrase like ‘ram the standard down the throat’ does not suggest impartial journalism.
The article agrees the code itself is fine. What it is concerned about is testing and improvement. It states: ‘That’s where the problem arises. Mobile wireless tests take time and money. The latter seems to know no bounds, and the former is running out as China falls further behind the rest of the world in its 3G rollout.’
You can read the rest of this article HERE but you should bear in mind that it is written for American telecommunication companies who would make very, very serious money if China abandoned TD-SCDMA.
Source: TMC Net. This article originally appeared in ‘EETimes.com’ but the signing on process is so impenetrable and user-hateful it is best to go elsewhere. The links given connect to the full article. The two illustrations are both of TD-SCDMA mobiles. The bottom one by Samsung.