Telecoms Korea has reported (behind a subscription wall that due to the inadequacies of the Chinese 3G standard TD-SCDMA licenses for 3G mobile services in China are now expected to be granted in the first half of next year. This marks a change from January this year when there was a lot of hints that the 3G licenses would be issued at the beginning of 2006. This delay would make it very difficult for operators to roll out the service in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
From my point of view this has gone on long enough — China is now throwing good money after bad. By the time TD-SCDMA is developed it is likely to be competing with the next iteration of 3G technologies, and still be behind. Worse, mobile content developers in China are focusing on older 2G and 2.5G technologies, which could hold them back from developing a competitive offering to export. While most of the world’s users are not on 3G networks yet, the content developers are gaining experience with the higher-quality content available on those networks while supported by sales on the earlier networks.
Related stories:
–China Approves TD-SCDMA Standard
–China: TD-SCDMA Ready
–China To Finally Get 3G In Early 2006
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