China Homegrown 3G Standard To Test In Hong Kong
HONG KONG -(Dow Jones)- A small trial network of China's homegrown third-generation mobile phone standard will be set up in Hong Kong soon, according to a Hong Kong government-backed wireless industry association.
The trial network of TD-SCDMA, or Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access, would likely be the first outside mainland China and would bolster China's efforts to export the standard.
TD-SCDMA trials are already taking place in Beijing and Shanghai, while the government has said it will push development of TD-SCDMA domestically and abroad.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong Wireless Technology Industry Association said the Hong Kong government had preliminarily agreed to grant a trial license for the network and allocate the spectrum for the testing platform of TD-SCDMA, which will be located in the Hong Kong's Cyberport, a mixed office and residential area in Pokfulam.
"It's a small scale testing, the network will not reach an area outside Cyberport," he said, adding that the trial can help mobile content providers and phone makers to test their products' adaptability to China's homegrown 3G standard.
He said the trial, which will last two to three years, is estimated to cost about HK$20 million, and will be funded by the Hong Kong government, private industry players in Hong Kong, and Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co., one of the key developers of TD-SCDMA in China.
Datang will cooperate with Hong Kong on TD-SCDMA, but is negotiating the form of cooperation, said a source working in Datang. The source didn't say if Datang was talking with the Hong Kong government or a Hong Kong company.
A spokeswoman for Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority Friday confirmed they have received application for a trial license of TD-SCDMA, which is still pending approval.
TD-SCDMA has never been used in a commercial network, not even in China.
When China named TD-SCDMA an official standard for the country in January, ahead of two competing standards, WCDMA and CDMA2000, it said the homegrown standard was mature enough to be used independently in commercial networks.
"If the government wasn't committed (and confident of a successful product), it wouldn't be doing trials in Hong Kong," said ABN Amro telecom analyst Helen Zhu in a research note Friday.
-By Ernest Kong, Victoria Ruan and Terence Poon, Dow Jones Newswires; 852-2802-7002 and 8610 6588 5848; ernest.kong@dowjones.com and terence.poon@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires "
Posted to the site on 10th March 2006
