China's Independent 3G Standard Enters Fast Growth Era

On the P&T/EXPO COMM CHINA 2008, which was held a few days ago, China Mobile took part in the exhibition associating with 42 enterprises on the TD-SCDMA industry chain. The relative principal from China Mobile stated that it will put all its efforts forward in promoting various taches in the industry to jointly develop the businesses related to the TD standard of the third generation communication technology with independent intellectual property rights, making independent standard be recognized by more subscribers.

In order to advance the improvement of TD industrialization further, speed up the step of application, construct a network with high quality and wide coverage, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic China had permitted China Mobile to widen the range of TD public trial operation. It is heard that the number of cities got involved in the second period of TD network construction will increase by 28 on the basis of 10 cities originally.

According to statistics, as of September 20, TD subscribers of China Mobile have been close to 300 thousand persons since the startup of distribution of phone numbers for public trial operation in April this year, which especially because that the TD technology was used in Beijing Olympic Games. And by now, the volume of base stations of TD network is more than 16 thousand and over 40 types of terminals are issued with the network entrance certificates.

Besides that the public trial operation took a breakthrough, the industry chain of independent standard extended increasingly and the R&D capacity become further strong. In the middle of July, those powerful enterprises like China Mobile, China Post and Telecom Appliances Company, MediaTek Inc., and Wingtech Group affiliated themselves with the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance formally. From that time, the enterprise alliance as the main drive of TD industry development has covered various industrial taches from the production to the market, including operation, manufacture and channel.

As to the further development of independent standards, Yang Hua, the General Secretary of TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance, disclosed that the Industry Alliance will technically devoted itself to the optimization and upgrade of the TD network. Contemporarily, to prepare technical reserve for TD standards and tend to a long term evolution development according to the tendency of technology is the main task. Currently, the TD-LTE (TD long term evolution) has been one of the important R&D programs of new generation broadband wireless communications network, and has been listed as National Significant Science and Technology Standard Project and is supported by all circles.

As to the market expansion, Yang Hua expressed that the Industry Alliance will cooperate with China Mobile actively to complete the invitation to public bidding for the second TD network construction, promote TD market application, and accelerate the international expansion of TD. It is told that the commercial network of TD co-constructed by Potevio and MYWAVE, an Italian communications company, has been opened since September 12. It is the first TD commercial network in the world and it is also an important step for TD's marching to market of developed countries of Europe.

Before that, with the help of National Development and Reform Commission, Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group, as one of the main promoter and undertaker of TD internationalization, opened the first TD trial network with Korea SK Telecommunications in Seoul Korea in April, 2007. Zhen Caiji, the president of Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group introduced that Datang will further put forward TD internationalization and have a plan to drive together with SK Telecommunications the overseas sales of TD appliances. At present, Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group is communicating with operators in Africa and South-East Asia, which all showed great interests in TD-SCDMA network and TD appliances.

Since 1998 when China submitted the proposal for TD technology standard to the International Telecommunications Union, independent standard has produced remarkable achievements during such a decade. For all, experts reminded that independent standard is still facing quite some bottlenecks in its development; especially at the time when it takes breakthrough on the development and application of business and obtains subscribers' recognition can independent standard achieve a long-term development.