China's leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer the Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group and the Siemens AG of Germany signed an agreement Thursday in Beijing on the TD-SCDMA technology of the third generation of mobile telecommunication.

According to the agreement, the Chinese and German companies will cooperate to make the third generation mobile system a success in China and other parts of the world.

The agreement was one of the 29 agreements signed Thursday between Chinese and German businesspeople and institutions, and also one that caught wide attention.

The TD-SCDMA standard, submitted by Datang to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on behalf of China, was adopted by the ITU and the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), and has become one of the three dominant standards of the third generation mobile telecommunication systems along with WCDMA of Europe and CDMA2000 of the United States.

The TD-SCDMA has many technical advantages and can have great influence on China's mobile telecommunication market as well as the mobile telecommunication industry elsewhere, said an expert with Datang.

Datang and Siemens signed an initial agreement in August 1999 on the development of the system, and Datang has invested 400 million yuan (about US$48.4 million) so far.

Under the new agreement the two sides will cooperate for three years, and Datang plans to invest 200 million yuan initially.

Experts say that if the third generation is put into use at the end of 2003, it is estimated that the market share in China for the third generation will be 1 trillion yuan (about US$120.9 billion) by the year 2010.

(People's Daily November 1, 2001)