U.S. telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies said Wednesday it plans to invest an additional US$70 million on the research and development of its third-generation wireless technology in southeastern China.

That move is part of Lucent’s commitment to long-term mobile network development in China, the statement said.

“The funds will be used to expand the existing research and development of 3G mobile technology in the center based in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province,” Lucent said in a statement issued Wednesday.

While 3G technology has been adopted in Europe and Japan, the Chinese Government is still conducting field tests on three widely accepted standards before issuing 3G licenses to the country’s telecom operators.

The three standards are TD-SCDMA, jointly developed by State-owned Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co. and Germany’s Siemens AG, WCDMA, which builds on the Global System for Mobile Communications, and CDMA2000, which is based on Code Division Multiple Access technology used in the United States.

Lucent, which now has five research and development centers in China, has participated in both WCDMA and CDMA2000 trials.

Once launched, 3G is expected to provide high-speed data transmission through wireless networks that can deliver multimedia content to mobile phones and similar devices.

Lucent has also helped local telecom operators to expand their networks.

As part of that effort, Lucent this week signed a US$98.5 million contract with China Unicom’s Guangdong unit for its phase III CDMA network expansion project.

(Shenzhen Daily September 9, 2004)