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Monday, November 22, 2004

China's 3G standard at risk? 

When talking about 3G telecom, you might have heard of WCDMA or CDMA2000, but TD-SCDMA is the odd man out. As a China-developed standard created by Siemens and Datung, it was often seen as a bargaining chip - a domestic Chinese development that could be used to put competitive pressure on the American and European competitors who wanted market share in the PRC. However, news out recently indicates TD-SCDMA is in worse shape than people thought, and that it is a poor competitor with the other standards. At last week's 3G World Congress and Exhibition in Hong Kong, TD-SCDMA was definitely scarce. It does not bode well for their camp.

On a side note, while others at the Expo were showing off handsets and testing equipment, the Ericsson booth had nothing but couches and a small food buffet in the middle. This is incredibly odd considering Sony-Ericsson is not only shipping 3G handsets, they are selling them in Hong Kong. Overall, the show was full of folks with test equipment and management systems. There was an impressive range of hansets from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei. The company's stuff seems to have snagged Algeria's attention.