[photopress:cricket.jpg,full,alignright]A new homegrown wireless standard, TD-SCDMA, is being rolled out in time for the Beijing Olympics. Those who doubt whether it will succeed should regard the situation in Australia where the current Ashes match is being held. (This is cricket which consists of two teams of flanelled fools trying to knock down or protect three sticks. The matches take five days to play although much of that time the players are in relative immobility. Not so the spectators one group of which is known, with good reason, as the Barmy Army.)
Australians are totally obsessed by this and many are now following it on mobile phone. The network offering cricket telly on mobiles is 3G which is also a major sponsor for these cricket matches and has its symbol blazoned in the green grass of the playing pitch.
Judging by this Australian reaction to what is possibly the world’s most boring sport, TD-SCDMA is definitely there with a fighting chance if it is up and running in time for the Olympics. Yes, it is a little later than that of everyone else but it is homegrown — no expensive royalties to pay — and will be thoroughly debugged as it should be going on display it a working form in the very near future.
If you want to boast remember that TD-SCDMA stands for time division synchronous code division multiple access. Sounds illogical and slightly daft but it works.
The Ministry of Information Industry is expected to hand out licenses early next year which means providers and handset vendors will be fully operational by the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
China would like TD-SCDMA — see how easily it rolls off the tongue? — to evolve into a rival global standard to W-CDMA (wideband CDMA) and CDMA2000 EV-DO (evolution data optimized). Not probable but possible.
Vincent Dong, a Beijing-based senior analyst with Norson Telecom Consulting, said, ‘A lot of the core TD-SCDMA intellectual protection (IP) rights are held by Chinese companies, which means IP licensing fees will be lower than for competing international standards. And the standard’s Chinese origins mean that most of the major players in the TD-SCDMA value chain are Chinese.’ Only an analyst can say ‘TD-SCDMA value chain’ and keep his face straight.
The transition will be a little complicated.
There are already well over 400 million mobile-phone users in China who basically use one of two major 2G (the generation before the one with television built in) wireless networks: China Mobile’s GSM (global system for mobile communications) or that of China Unicom, which supports both GSM and CDMA standards.
The problem is that all foreign phones use a different standard. So it is very likely that initially, at least, we will see hybrid 3G networks and phones that use both the Chinese standard and one of the established rivals, either W-CDMA or CDMA2000.
This will not be easy and it will not be inexpensive. But it will happen for this is China and the potential sales figures give mobile phone makers wondrous dreams.
Source: Business Week
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