Chinese 3G Plans Raise New Hopes For CDMA

Not only will the Chinese 3G roll-out, planned for next year, inject $30bn into the depressed wireless infrastructure market, but it is raising new hopes for two beleaguered technologies – the country’s own TD-SCDMA, and CDMA2000.

December 18, 2008 - China Mobile is publicly discontented with being stuck with the homegrown 3G standard, and is plotting early moves to adopt the TDD variant of LTE (largely developed in China), to expand the functionality of its 3G network. However, the Chinese authorities, and the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance (TDIA) that they support, have always been blinkered about any weaknesses in their favourite son, and are still clinging to global ambitions for the platform once it is proven in its homeland.

The Alliance says the time is right for TD-SCDMA systems to be sold worldwide, to allow operators – which increasingly need more spectrum to support mobile broadband, especially the data-focused TDD variety – to deploy often unused TDD bandwidth. TDIA secretary general Yang Hua in a recent presentation, obtained by CommsDay, that, while the key goal for the technology is to be successful in China, there are 117 3G licenses worldwide that have reserved TDD spectrum suitable for TD-SCDMA. He is particularly interested in western Europe – where France Telecom has a development project on TD-SCDMA – and parts of south east Asia. According to Yang, TD-SCDMA is already deployed in Hong Kong and Ghana, and trial networks are in place in South Korea with SKT, in Italy with MY WIVE, and in Canada with TRLab.

Whatever Chinese hopes for TD-SCDMA, these are hardly as high as Qualcomm’s for a new boost for CDMA2000. Cristiano Amon, senior VP of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, said in an interview: “We think 3G in China could boost the CDMA2000 ecosystem ... We are moving forward with all of our R&D for China, specifically CDMA2000. We are introducing a new suite of products.” Included in these will be multiband chips for the entry level CDMA series, which was previously available only in a single band 800MHz implementation. Now there will be multiband options with 450MHz and 700MHz, since China Telecom is using CDMA450 to expand into sparsely populated areas, and will use the 850MHz band for higher density areas. It has requested vendors to support both bands in all their phones.

China was widely seen as the key reason why Alcatel-Lucent, in outlining its turnaround plan last week, was not more ruthless in slashing activities in the CDMA market that have been dragging it down since its merger. CEO Ben Verwaayen told analysts: "I was just talking with a very big CDMA customer, and I'm very excited about the prospects”, and few would bet against that customer being China Telecom.