Just as it's doing with its nascent 3G network, China's forging ahead with a bunch of no-name, homegrown protocols duking it out for the title of National Mobile TV Standard, a fight that's waging deep within the halls of the country's Standardization Administration. CMMB, DMB-TH, T-MMB, CMB, and CDMB -- five "standards" we'll bet a wooden nickel you've never heard of -- are all in the running, although it seems that a rogue dissenter has gone ahead and sped up the process just a bit. China's SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television) is flatly ignoring the standardization process and starting a CMMB build-out already, promising availability in 37 cities via terrestrial networks while the planned July launch of the CMMB-STAR satellite will deliver broadcasts to a total of 324. It seems a wide variety of manufacturers are already on board and the SARFT has started producing CMMB-ready content, so yeah, you can just go ahead and wrap up this whole dog and pony show you call a standards selection process, k?

[Via mocoNews]