Closing of China Mobile 3G Base Stations Signifies End of China's Self-owned Standard

Several China Mobile’s branches across the country have closed their 3G-only base stations, as the telecoms giant is shifting its focus to 4G, according to caixin.com.

Insider from China Mobile said the decision was not made by the company’s head office, but was an act of local branches on their own in certain provinces.

However, China mobile has decided to phase out its TD-SCDMA standard 3G network, and put more resources into developing TD-LTE standard 4G service, the insider added.

The closed base stations only support TD-SCDMA, China’s homegrown 3G network, which is jointly endorsed by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China Mobile, and another national telecoms giant China Unicom. In 2000, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has approved TD-SCDMA as one of the three international 3G network standards, along with the European WCDMA standard and the American CDMA2000 standard.

China Mobile has been burdened with the running of TD-SCDMA since 2009. It has invested a total of 200 billion yuan (around 30.7 billion USD) into the network, and headlines have it recently that these money has “come to naught”.

The government-backed standard never became popular with China Mobile’s subscribers, said caixin.com. In 2013, China Mobile’s 3G network averaged a download speed of 2.8 megabits per second, while China's Unicom's was 21 m/s and China Telecom's was 3.1 m/s.

Within five years of its development, the TD-SCDMA standard network has only accounted for 23 percent of the firm’s total data traffic, whereas the year-old TD-LTE standard 4G network has handled 39 percent. The shutting down of TD-SCDMA base stations may thus signifies an end of the China’s self-owned standard.