China finally going 3G

China finally has given permission to start commercial trials of 3G cellular technology but, at this point, only of the country's home-grown Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). China has been promising some sort of 3G service in time for the international event of summer olympics, and the country's (and the world's) largest carrier, China Mobile, has now built TD-SCDMA networks in eight cities, including the five Olympic venues. Interestingly, the Chinese have not yet formally issued frequency spectrum allocations for 3G, but that's apparently going to be little more than a formality. Under its commercial trial license, China Mobile reveals, it's built a network with a capacity of some eight million users.

The launch of 3G in China has been an international political hot potato for years now, with other countries charging that the Chinese have been dragging their feet on 3G in order to give TD-SCDMA time to be developed. That's allegedly to prevent the use of other 3G standards - WCDMA and CDMA2000 - even though, technically, they have been made legal in China by a reportedly reluctant government caving in to international pressure. Still, reports are that there's major pressure on China Mobile, China Unicom and other carriers to "choose" TD-SCDMA, a situation that would thus favor Chinese manufacturers in what has emerged as the world's biggest single cellphone market. Carriers reportedly served 565 million mobile phone users by the end of last month, estimated at about a 43-percent penetration rate of the total available market.