China Continues To Play Favorites: TD-SCDMA

Aware of the attractiveness of the huge domestic market, the Chinese government is indiscreet in its bias towards supporting local technology as mandatory. They hope that the sheer size of the domestic market will make global de facto standards, creating export opportunity and royalty revenue. Such was it for their WAPI WiFi standard, which much of the world rejected, and such is it now with TD-SCDMA. TD-SCDMA is a "Chinese variant" of the UMTS 3G spectrum and competes with W-CDMA. Yesterday, Telecom Asia reported that "China's TD-SCDMA flunks trials" indicating that the technology had not measured up to expectations in government-run trials. The official government announcement, however, was "...had made significant improvements and laid very good foundations for further development." which anyone who knows Asian communication style understands to be a damning review. The Chinese government has been delaying 3G auctions in order to run a "beauty contest" to see which 3G technology they should require in the licenses, but it appears they will keep on delaying the 3G auctions until their frog turns into a prince.

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