China’s homegrown 3G system starts public trials

China’s homegrown 3G mobile phone network has at last been tentatively launched, four years behind schedule, and with only four months until the Olympics are set to kick off. Commercial trials began yesterday (April 1) in eight Chinese cities, with only 40,000 handsets and 10,000 computer data cards available for public use. Another 20,000 phones and 5,000 cards will be given to people specially selected by China Mobile - these lucky few will be given free air time worth RMB 800 (USD 110).

China Mobile will trial TD-SCDMA, China’s own version of 3G, in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shenyang, and Qinhuangdao - the cities where Olympic events are due to take place. It will offer users a range of services, including video calling, mobile TV, photo and video sharing and Olympics-related content. Some existing services, such as Fetion, a mobile instant message service, and mobile music downloads, will also be available. Reports from Shanghai said TD-SCDMA users were already having difficulty with video phone services.

The launch of mainland 3G services has been scheduled since the TD-SCDMA standard was internationally approved nearly a decade ago. Beijing has been keen to develop a homegrown standard to avoid paying heavy royalty fees for rival systems such as WCDMA - developed in Europe - and CDMA 2000, an American system. However, development of the new technology has not been trouble-free, and a lack of handsets and infrastructure problems have led the government to delay issuing 3G operating licences several times.

TD-SCDMA’s ability to transmit and receive on the same frequency makes it well suited for data-intensive applications such as mobile internet access and multimedia services. Data transfer rates range up to 2 megabits per second (Mbps) (WCDMA mobile services in Hong Kong provide up to 14.4 Mbp/s downloading speed). The current trial is open ended, and there is no date set for expansion of the TD-SCDMA network across whole of mainland China.

Image source: Associated Press

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