China to build 'trial' 3G network

CHINA MOBILE has officially asked ten vendors to tender bids to build a 'trial' 3G network based on China's own home-spun technology - TD-SCDMA. The trial networks will be built in eight Chinese cities and should be operational by October 2007.

The list of companies invited to bid does include some prominent international suppliers including Nokia and Ericsson. However, sources say that two Chinese companies Datang Mobile and ZTE will probably get around 30 per cent of the contracts each.

Another supplier expected to win around 15 per cent of the contracts is TD Tech, a joint venture between Huawei and Siemens, while Huawei will also bid seperately for the core network equipment contract. That leaves Nokia and Ericsson facing a maximum of five per cent each.

The value of the total network build has been variously estimated as being worth around $2.5 billion. Although China Mobile is expected to spend an additional $516.8 million on purchasing mobile handsets.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the Chinese government hasn't officially awarded any licences for 3G despite the fact that it has repeatedly said it is considering W-CDMA and cdma2000 as well as TD-SCDMA.

Shi Jixing, vice chairman of the China Mobile Communications Association has been quoted as saying that the network operators themselves don't actually favour TD-SCDMA. It's just that the government does.

An interesting aspect highlighted by the TD-SCDMA Forum is that HSDPA technology can apparently be incorporated into the TD-SCDMA specs and that only Datung is up and ready with equipment capable of doing that.

The general consensus is that the Chinese government will await the outcome of these 'trails' before awarding any 3G licences. So we're now looking at 2008 before that happens. µ

L'INQ
TD-SCDMA Forum