TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access) Alliance, an organization promoting the Chinese third generation (3G) wireless telecommunications standard, is in negotiations with domestic and foreign firms to enroll more members.

"We welcome more firms both home and abroad to join the alliance to strengthen the industrial chain for the standard and make the alliance become more internationalized," said Yang Hua, secretary-general of TD-SCDMA Alliance.

"We are still discussing on some specific issues related to the membership and the names of the new members are still unsure at the moment," he told China Daily.

He disclosed that the alliance is talking to 10 foreign telecoms equipment providers including Siemens and Nokia.

Currently only two new members are confirmed - Tongyu Communications Equipment Co Ltd and Italian STMicroelectronics, the first foreign company in the alliance.

As one of the three 3G standards, TD-SCDMA is the most advanced solution for mobile operators with unpaired frequency bands.

The standard has become increasingly important since the Chinese Government sent out a strong hint in early January that it is likely to release 3G licences this year.

As the standard is homegrown, the government has spared no effort in supporting it.

The government has allocated 155MHZ frequency resources especially for the standard.

Some analysts even alleged that the delay in China's 3G strategies is in fact enabling TD-SCDMA to speed up its commercialization to catch up with the other two 3G standards - European based Wideband CDMA and US Qualcomm based CDMA 2000.

"I don't agree with the viewpoints," argued Yang. He believes the government's cautious attitude towards 3G is mainly based on market development, and the maturity of 3G technology.

In fact, the faster-than-expected development of TD-SCDMA technology has recently made it gain increasing popularity among foreign firms.

In January, T3G Technology Co Ltd, a leading supplier of chipset solutions for powerful 3G TD-SCDMA mobile phones, announced the closing of its third round of financing and has secured Motorola as a new investor.

The company's other big telecoms investors and partners have already included Philips, Datang and Samsung.

Motorola, through its corporate venture arm, Motorola Ventures, has made a significant investment in T3G and will support the design and development of TD-SCDMA chipsets for mobile phones.

"The addition of Motorola, together with the renewed support of current partners, will ensure commercialization of T3G's technology," said Johan Pross, T3G's chief executive officer.

"We are expected to achieve the breakthrough in 2005 for the implementation of the Chinese 3G standard and achieve comparable maturity as WCDMA and CDMA 2000," he said.

"T3G's successful financing not only proves T3G's shareholders and the new investor's confidence in its capabilities to maintain the leading market position in TD-SCDMA terminal chipset solutions, but also shows their confidence in the bright prospects of the TD-SCDMA market," said Tang Ru'an, T3G chairman and chief executive officer of Datang Mobile.

This recent success in financing will ensure the growth of T3G and also speed up the time-to-market of its competitive TD-SCDMA commercial terminal chipsets, he said.

"As one of Motorola Ventures' first direct investments in China, we believe that T3G will be instrumental in bringing 3G TD-SCDMA into wide scale commercial deployment," said Matthew Insley Growney, Managing Director of Motorola Ventures.

T3G has recently achieved the first whole system level voice call on their TD-SCDMA Modem chip and has successfully realized the world's first 128kbps packet data transmission on its commercial chipset platform designed for TD-SCDMA handsets.

As a landmark in the industrialization of TD-SCDMA, it provides an additional incentive for telecom providers to upgrade their networks from 2G or 2.5G to 3G.

(China Daily February 22, 2005)