China recruits 3G standards from other countries
by Brian White 
posted May 23rd 2007 at 10:47AM
And we thought China's government was pretty solid on deploying TD-SCDMA as the 3G wireless standard of choice in the billion-plus country. It's kinda scary when a single carrier there has more wireless subscribers than the entire US population. Anyway, the Chinese government has had a change of heart it seems, and will be allowing foreign 3G standards into the country's wireless landscape. Why? It appears that forcing more innovation in its own homegrown wireless standard by opening up the market to competing standards -- WCDMA and CDMA2000 among them -- may light some fires under the status of current homegrown deployments.[Via MobileBurn]
Filed under: Misc
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3drage @ May 23rd 2007 11:30AM
This is quite interesting.
Admiral @ May 23rd 2007 12:05PM
my prediction --> china goes wcdma
The only CDMA (2k/EV) that are huge (and probably wont change anytime soon, or have parallel wcdma networks) are US, Canada and Japan. Korea seems to be on the switching path
greenlight @ May 23rd 2007 12:59PM
Well the reason that WCDMA will win over CDMA2000 in china is because of the grey market - you won't be able to buy a knockoff Meizu iPhone for dirt cheap and just start using it with CDMA2000 the same way you can with WCDMA, etc.
Jamar @ May 24th 2007 6:52AM
Yep- there's a huge gray market here in China for Japanese phones. Mostly unlockable ones, but some DoCoMo and AU phones to play with too. Once WCDMA hits China people here (I live in China) will get to work unlocking DoCoMo phones- they already have 3G roaming after all. No, they won't care if data doesn't work- the girls only really care about fashion, and in my school I'm the only one who actually uses the internet on my phone (except when on school trips- without a computer nearby they'd rather use MySpace or Facebook on a tiny 160x160 screen than not at all; it's so sad).
Keymaster @ May 23rd 2007 1:14PM
This smacks of Qualcomm interference