The commercialization of China's standard for third-generation (3G) wireless communications, TD-SCDMA, seems to be gaining momentum.

However, analysts still doubt whether TD-SCDMA will be able to make a big splash in the future 3G market, which will be worth hundreds of billions of US dollars.

Blurred prospects

A complete product line-up of TD-SCDMA -- ranging from core chips, base stations and handsets to intelligent antennas -- will be ready for commercial use by next June, Zhang Qi, a senior official with the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), announced last week.

That will not delay the deployment of operators' 3G networks, she added.

Industry observers widely believe China will not permit operators to build out their 3G networks unless TD-SCDMA is ready to deploy.

TD-SCDMA competes with Europe-initiated WCDMA, or UMTS, and US-backed CDMA 2000.

Zhang said the commercialization of TD-SCDMA is gaining momentum, as more industry players are joining the TD-SCDMA camp.

Nortel Networks last week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China Putian Corp to form a joint venture to research, develop and manufacture products based on TD-SCDMA and WCDMA.

Germany-based Siemens and China's Huawei Technologies have formed a joint venture to develop and market TD-SCDMA.

Nortel also has launched a laboratory with China's Datang to test TD-SCDMA.

Datang and Siemens are TD-SCDMA's major developers.

Media last week reported minor operator China Satcom planned to invest 80 billion yuan (US$9.64 billion) to deploy TD-SCDMA networks.

Yet, TD-SCDMA is unlikely to see a major turnaround, analysts said.

"The timetable for the commercialization of TD-SCDMA has been revised several times, which has let down the industry," said a Beijing-based analyst, who asked not to be named.

"It still lacks industry-wide support, especially from the top players."

Li Shihe, chief technology officer of Datang Mobile Communications Equipment, has said TD-SCDMA will be ready for deployment this year.

Now, however, that seems unlikely.

"The overall landscape is clear: WCDMA and CDMA 2000 will dominate the 3G market," said Edward Yu, president of Analysys Consulting.

"The most likely scenario for TD-SCDMA is it may serve as an add-on technology to some operators' WCDMA networks, or as a stand-alone technology for minor operators to deploy networks."

A report by Norson Telecom Consulting suggested it is very unlikely TD-SCDMA will be used as a stand-alone technology to deploy 3G networks.

The TD-SCDMA industry alliance is quite loose, and China's top telecoms gear vendors, Huawei and ZTE, have not paid enough attention to TD-SCDMA, the report said.

Major foreign vendors are still adopting a wait-and-see attitude towards the relatively young Chinese standard, due to their lack of confidence in its prospects.

On the sidelines of a recent telecoms show in Singapore, for example, Ericsson's chief executive officer, Carl-Henric Svanberg, would not say if his firm would support TD-SCDMA.

"We believe TD-SCDMA is much further behind in its development than publicly claimed by its proponents, and that many of its Western-based backers are only supporting the technology to gain favor with the Chinese Government," said Michael W. Thelander, founder of US-based Signals Research Group.

"We also believe TD-SCDMA is part of an overall ploy by the Chinese Government to receive more favorable IPR (intellectual property rights) terms from western companies, in particular Qualcomm."

Qualcomm is the major developer of CDMA 2000. It also claims IPRs over WCDMA and TD-SCDMA.

China Mobile and China Unicom are widely expected to adopt WCDMA and CDMA 2000, respectively, due to the natural "immigration path" of their current technologies.

Thelander predicted China Telecom and China Netcom will select WCDMA, at least WCDMA is their current preference, after they receive their 3G licenses.

Rumors are swirling that China Telecom plans to install 400 WCDMA base stations in Beijing by year's end.

"TD-SCDMA may ultimately be deployed by an operator in China, but it will be due to necessity, not choice, and its performance will likely pale in comparison with its claimed performance," Thelander said.

A lot of problems may arise even if TD-SCDMA is put into commercial use, as it is an unproven technology.

In the initial stage of WCDMA's development, the European technology has encountered numerous problems, such as poor interoperability and short handset battery life.

If China Mobile decides to adopt TD-SCDMA to complement its UMTS networks, "it will take a number of years before it successfully interconnects TD-SCDMA to its UMTS/GPRS/GSM network, if it ever does," the analyst said.

MII is conducting technical trials based on the three 3G standards.

But all of the trials and all of the current solutions are stand-alone TD-SCDMA solutions that lack an essential feature -- multi-mode, Thelander noted.

Zhang said at least five TD-SCDMA handsets will be launched "within five or six months." They will be able to run on both the TD-SCDMA and GSM/GPRS networks.

(Business Weekly June 29, 2004）