Motorola backs Chinese 3G standard

US phone giant Motorola says it is willing to invest in China's home-grown third generation mobile technology.

Motorola is one of the leading developers of the rival CDMA2000 1x technology and also develops handsets for the European 3G system, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System).

According to the TD-SCDMA Forum, a Chinese industry group, four 3G licences are likely to be awarded by Beijing this year. Quoting academic Lu Tingjie, the group said licences 'would definitely be issued in 2003, most likely to China Telecom, China Netcom, China Mobile and China Unicom.'

The TD-SCDMA Forum is led by China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Huawei, Motorola and Nortel, as well as Datang Group and Siemens, who are jointly developing the Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access standard.

Minister of Information Industry Wu Jichuan said last month that a decision on licences could not be made before the government considered new telecommunications legislation in March.

Many analysts have speculated that China would delay the roll-out of 3G networks until at least the end of next year in order to give the Chinese standard a chance to compete with the European UMTS and the North American CDMA2000 1x standard. Both foreign standards are already being deployed or tested in a number of markets, including Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China is understood to favour TD-SCDMA because the government can influence the standards process. It would also obviate the need to pay licence fees to overseas developers.