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3G Testing In China

The very next month Chinese citizens may actually have a homegrown 3G technology. Being tested during the last three years, the TD-SCDMA-based 3G network, made in China, is now ready to be offered to a small commercial trial of 20,000 users. The first users will be picked out of government departments, development partners, telecom operators and industry insiders in 12 big cities. The trial will continue testing the standard`s performance in terms of connecting and roaming between different CDMA and GSM networks.

TD-SCDMA has been considered for a long time "the underdog standard", because of its relative immaturity and the smaller amount of R&D funds invested in it. As a government-run research institute, the Telecom Academy had stated, in the next half a year, when 3G licenses will be issued, the number of 3G users will get to 6.2 million per year. There are other analysts` estimations that TD-SCDMA will control about quarter of the market, ahead of CDMA.

For now, as the TD-SCDMA networks are in the middle of a major progress in the testing, networks have been arranged in Qingdao, Shandong Province, Baoding, in Xiamen, in Fujian Province and in Hebei Province. The tests are supposed to end very soon. They have already showed that voice connections have arrived at 95% consistency, which is enough for commercialization, according to general manager of Datang Telecom Bing Cao.