After eight years of development, TD-SCDMA - the Beijing-backed 3G standard - is now ready for large-scale commercial deployment, according to Yang Hua, secretary-general of the TD-SCDMA Industry Alliance (TDIA).
Speaking at a TD-SCDMA workshop jointly organized by the TDIA and the TD-SCDMA Forum at ITU Telecom World 2006, Yang said the China 3G technology can now be operated as a standalone network, as opposed to W-CDMA and cdma2000.
He said TD-SCDMA has made a lot of progress in many areas, especially in the chipset and test and measurement aspects.
'We are now in the final stage before commercialization, and TD-SCDMA is in commercial trials by Chinese operators in several cities,' Yang said.
Meanwhile, vendors like Datang Mobile, ZTE and Alcatel Shanghai Bell are all displaying TD-SDMA equipment that supports HSDPA, he said.
Yang said the equipment on display at the show is the enhanced version of TD-SCDMA. By 2008, TD-SCDMA will also be able to support the 3GPP's LTE (Long Term Evolution) as part of its evolution roadmap.
Yang said progress has also been made on the terminal side, with over 20 handset makers launching more than 40 models of TD-SCDMA handsets, including dual mode TD-SCDMA and GSM handsets.
Handsets will be ready for commercial use by the end of this year, Yang said. ZTE, for instance, is unveiling two models of TD-SCDMA/GSM dual mode handset at ITU Telecom World that support typical 3G services like video call, streaming media and Java downloads.
Meanwhile, Datang Mobile, one of TD-SCDMA's chief promoters, officially kicked off its Arena platform and an open lab in a bid to address interoperability issues and help service providers and content providers accelerate the development of applications and services for TD-SCDMA, said Sun Yuwang, SVP of Datang Mobile.