China 'to play fair over 3G standard'

In the development of China's 3G licence strategy, the involvement of foreign telecoms companies has been uncertain as the government is seemingly plumping for a homegrown standard. Now the country's Ministry of Information Industry has said the licences will be technology-neutral.

According to reports in the Chinese press, the Ministry is considering established flavours of 3G alongside its own version, TD-SCDMA.

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Xi Guohua, a vice minister at the Ministry of Information Industry, told the Shanghai Daily: "We will treat W-CDMA and CDMA-2000 equally. It has nothing to do with supporting a locally developed standard." W-CDMA is traditionally favoured in Europe and CDMA-2000 is used in the US.

The paper quotes Xi as saying China will consider the maturity of the technology and how starting 3G services will affect the competitiveness of the domestic telecommunications market.

Licences are yet to be given out for China's 3G deployments. The country hopes to get the high-speed networks up and running before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, although some operators have expressed their doubts about the timescale.

It's thought there are now more than 300 million mobile users in China.