TD-SCDMA: Home Standard Passes Trial Test

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 06, 2002

TD-SCDMA: Home Standard Passes Trial Test

China's third-generation (3G) mobile telecom standard will be ready for commercial use within the year. The standard, TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access), which was jointly developed by China's Datang Telecom and German Siemens, has proved its maturity and is ready to be put into use, said Zhou Huan, chairman of Datang.

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Datang and Siemens recently held a field show -- an event where equipment is tested, for the TD-SCDMA technology. The field show calmed people's fears about the immaturity of the technology, Zhou said.

Milestone technology

Lou Qinjian, vice-minister of the information industry, said the technology is a milestone in China's telecom history.

As the first China-developed international telecom standard, TD-SCDMA may bring domestic telecom equipment makers new development opportunities, he said.

If TD-SCDMA is widely adopted by overseas mobile carriers, they would have to import related equipment from China, the official said.

Obvious advantages

TD-SCDMA is the youngest of the three international 3G standards, and has inevitably caused a certain amount of doubt over its maturity.

But this standard also has obvious advantages in frequency utilization efficiency, which means that TD-SCDMA could support more customers with the same frequency resource.

"It is very suitable for China which has limited frequency but a big population base," Lou said.

Other standards to compete with it

The other two, European developed WCDMA (wide band CDMA) and US-raised CDMA 2000, are also prepared to compete with TD-SCDMA and hope to attract more mobile users in China.

The Chinese Government is still observing the development trend of the 3G and have not yet decided which one to follow.

Siemens, the German electronic giant, has also invested millions of dollars in the TD-SCDMA development. It began co-operations with Datang in 1998 when few companies had high expectations for the TD-SCDMA.

"I am confident that China will surely use its own developed technology," said Peter Borger, vice-president of Siemens China.

China Mobile and China Unicom, the country's dual mobile carriers, also showed strong interest in the technology, but nobody has yet given any clear indication that they would adopt TD-SCDMA.

What is TD-SCDMA?

It's no secret that the 3rd Generation of Mobile Communications (3G) will power the next major business boom - by merging mobile telecommunications with the Internet. From fax, voice and e-mail through data, video and multimedia - virtually all of today's essential services will soon be available to mobile customers -"on the move".

TD-SCDMA Features

Advanced 3G services allow high speed data, packet data, multimedia and excellent voice quality by connecting TD-SCDMA RAN to the GSM/GPRS network.

Access to new UMTS spectrum resources increase the network capacity.

Outstanding Spectrum efficiency (1.6 MHz bandwidth, 3 to 5 times higher than GSM, handling more traffic with fewer base stations) ensures economic use of spectrum.

Support of all radio network scenarios (Wide Area - Macro, Local Area - Micro, Hot Spots - Pico and Corporate Networks) allows full service coverage.

Best suited for mobile Internet 3G applications provided by the inherent flexibility of the technology.

Flexibility for asymmetric traffic, data rates and radio resource allocation, allows optimum adaptation of the radio access to the actual traffic load within the network.

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