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Monday, April 23, 2007
BOAO, China: China has no timetable for issuing third-generation wireless permits, but hopes they will help balance a market skewed in favour of mobile operators, a top telecoms official said on Monday.
Xi Guohua, vice minister of the Ministry of Information Industry, added that licensing decisions were not linked to the ongoing trial operation of the home-developed TD-SCDMA network.
"We will work hard to speed up research and to pace up the decision-making process...but there is no timetable," Xi told the annual Boao Forum For Asia in southern Chinese island province of Hainan.
The market has favoured mobile operators, who were growing rapidly - although an expansion into poorer rural markets may dent profits in coming years - over fixed-line firms, Xi said.
"The current market competition is imbalanced with the business of mobile operators booming while the business of fixed-line operators is shrinking," Xi said, adding that he hoped the new licenses might help redress the balance.
Beijing earlier this year extended pre-commercial testing of a homegrown TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) standard to 10 cities from the original five.
Analysts say that trial extension is in effect a soft launch or rollout that favours local gearmakers - who have more of an edge in TD-SCDMA versus foreign makers more focused on better-established W-CDMA and CDMA2000.
China, keen to build up national technological standards but wary of face-losing hiccups, is walking a middle road between further delays in its TD-SCDMA rollout, and staying cautious.
Xi said there had been no technical problems with the homegrown standard, but the country was still open to other technology.
The official launch of 3G licenses looks increasingly distant, with Ericsson Chief Executive Carl-Henric Svanberg the first top industry executive to all but dismiss the chance of the much-awaited rollout happening this year.
But several executives who work closely with the four major telecom companies still expect licences in 2007.
© Reuters
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