Free 3G Phones for the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee

China Mobile says that it plans to donate some 15,000 3G phones based on the home grown TD-SCDMA technology to the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee. Wang Jianzhou, CEO of China Mobile (CHL), said at a press conference that the company now had a trial TD-SCDMA network up and running in eight cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shenyang, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Xiamen and Qinhuangdao.

Members of the Olympics Organizing Committee can presumably hope that the handsets they receive will not be plagued by the problems that are being reported by users in local media at the moment. The Olympics are seen as an opportunity to show off the functionality of the TD-SCDMA system - so problems could be embarrassing for China Mobile.

China Mobile is currently offering trialists of its 3G service a 50% discount during the trial commercial period.

Posted to the site on 16th April 2008