Chinese Ministry OK's independent 3G standard
China is to move ahead with the build-out of a 3G wireless network this year using its own independent communication standard, TD-SCDMA.
The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that after recent tests on TD-SCDMA, the Ministry of Information Industry had decided that the protocol could support 3G requirements in both handsets and network equipment.
The construction of a high-speed network in the world's most populated country will likely offer makers of compound semiconductor-based RFICs a huge market opportunity in both base stations and advanced handsets.
In the rest of the world, 3G networks have been based on dividing the available radio spectrum into chunks of either time or code to serve large numbers of users. However, TD-SCDMA is a more complex technology that uses spectrum divided up into both time and code.
TD-SCDMA was developed by the China Academy of Telecommunications Technology in collaboration with the German industrial giant Siemens.
Meanwhile, Nokia recently set up a joint venture with local service provider China Putian to develop network solutions for both TD-SCDMA and wideband-CDMA protocols (see related story).
The Chinese authorities are expected to award 3G licenses to service providers later this year, as the country readies its high-speed network in time for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
While the TD-SCDMA standard will now get official support from the Chinese, it is likely that conventional 3G protocols used in the rest of the world will also be built in the future. This is because the Chinese government will have to negotiate with the major network system vendors who own key intellectual property covering wireless communication standards.
But whatever the outcome of those negotiations, the end result should be a major boon for GaAs manufacturers such as RF Micro Devices and Skyworks Solutions, who will be vying to supply the chip technologies for RF components needed in both handsets and base stations.
