China's 3G cellular standard gets international approval

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 02 November 2005 14:55

Business IT - Technology

According to Chinese telecoms manufacturer, ZTE Corporation, China's 3G cellular standard, TD-SCDMA has been approved by the international cellular standards body, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

The standard was promoted and drafted by ZTE together with Datang Mobile and China's Research Institute of Telecommunications Transmission (RITT), a subsidiary of China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII), and was approved at the recent 29th 3GPP RAN plenary conference as TR 34.943.

According to ZTE, approval "will significantly speed up the TD-SCDMA conformance testing progress, improve TD-SCDMA implementation and thereby speed up the international acceptance of the standard."

China initiated development of the standard in order to help build an indigenous cellular industry. However manufacturers have been struggling to achieve commercial readiness and these delays have been widely seen as the reason that China has not yet awarded any 3G cellular licences: it wants TD-SCDMA to be able to compete with the Western WCDMA and CDMA2000 standards from day one.

China is now expected to award licences in 2006. Any further delay would likely compromise the chances of having established 3G networks onto which overseas visitors to the 2008 Beijing Olympics will be able to roam.