Timetable of 3G licensing

The crux to the delays of 3G licensing, in a large part, is that TD-SCDMA, a Chinese home-grown 3G standard is still being tested.

TD-SCDMA competes with WCDMA, which prevails in Europe, and CDMA 2000, which is popular in North America, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

All three are international standards approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an international organization within the United Nations co-ordinating the global telecom industry.

Unlike WCDMA and CDMA 2000, TD-SCDMA has yet to be put into commercial deployment.
The decision by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) not to issue 3G licenses in the past few years has given TD-SCDMA's backers time to further improve the technology.

TD-SCDMA in the past few months has gained significant momentum. Backers of the technology said it is already fully mature.

The government has been testing TD-SCDMA in cities of Baoding, Qingdao and Xiamen. Now the biggest hurdle thwarting the development of TD-SCDMA is that it lacks support from major handset makers. The development of TD-SCDMA handsets has lagged behind that of the TD-SCDMA networks and system.

But recently a number of TD-SCDMA handsets have been provided to some selected users for what might be the last round of tests of the technology.

If the tests prove successful, this might help provide hints to when the government will hand out the 3G licences.

"There is the least likelihood (for the 3G licensing) before the government can ensure TD-SCDMA is fully capable of competing with WCDMA and CDMA2000," said Deng Zhongyuan, an analyst with Beijing-based research house Analysys International.

Tang Ru'an, vice-president of Datang Telecom, the major developer of TD-SCDMA, last month said 3G licensing might happen in February. His logic is that further delays could mean operators have limited time to build networks to be able to offer 3G services during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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