Visitors to Beijing for the Olympics are not going to get, as promised, 3G service on their cellphones, but it is promised Wi-Fi will be widely available, and it will be free of charge.

China Communications, working with the Beijing city government, has launched the first phase of its Beijing WiCity, providing free wireless Internet access in select districts throughout the city (shaded orange on the illustration).

The plan is to provide free Wifi over a 100 square kilometer area through the Olympics an this will be the biggest Wi-Fi network in China. From there it will expand by next year to 625 square kilometers next year and by 2010 Beijing’s entire city center and the rural areas surrounding the city will be covered.

Tests so far have not been overly encouraging with the Beijing office of the Wall Street Jornal, located within a covered area, only one bar of signal was detected and it wasn’t possible to connect. Media blog Danwei reported access trouble, and a Sina.com report noted that in Beijing’s hi-tech district, Zhongguancun, the signal only worked outdoors.

Sadly, there will be no 3G cellular service except perhaps that based in testing mode on TD-SCDMA, the home standard, despite past pledges from officials. Since China hasn’t issued any 3G licenses for networks using the two international kinds of 3G technology, the networks haven’t been built.

The government has said that 3G services using China’s homegrown TD-SCDMA technology will be available in time for the Games — but overseas visitors phones are not compatible with that standard.
Source: Wall Street Journal Blog

The central government has set a target of more than 100 million TD-SCDMA subscribers in three years for China Mobile according to the South China Morning Post. China Mobile was asked to submit a detailed business plan and budget for the next round of tender, worth US$4.36 billion, for extending the TD-SCDMA network.

TD-SCDMA is China’s homegrown standard for third-generation mobile communications and all reports suggest it does not, as yet, work very well.

The news was delivered by Li Yizhong, the new information industry minister, when he met China Mobile and industry executives.

Li said that the number of TD-SCDMA users should surpass Xiaolingtong users at their peak in 2006, which was more than 93 million, according to an anonymous source. Xiaolingtong is a fixed-line technology that provides limited mobile service.

China Mobile currently has 3,000 paying TD-SCDMA subscribers and 20,000 users who were invited to use the service for free.

The firm is operating trial networks in eight cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.

Informally, this writer thinks the targets will not be easy to attain and will require some amazing pricing discounts to get it moving and a great improvement in its technical ability for it to become popular.

Luckly, China Mobile has the marketing power, and the money, and the technical expertise to possibly acheive this target. But it will not be easy.

And certainly it will not be widely available by the start of the Olympics.

The date 2011 has been mentioned and that seem more likely.
Source: Forbes

For China and its hi-tech companies there are always new world’s to conquer. Now Huawei Technologies, a leader in providing next generation telecommunications network solutions for operators around the world, is seeking to expand its services.

It wants to become a dominant player in telecoms services in East Africa.

The telecoms firm, which is marking its 10 years of business in East Africa said its expansion is in line with Huawei’s strategy to expand its regional network by offering customer’s specialized service and engineering teams who will get it done quickly the way the customer wants.
Source: Trading Markets

So integrated is the mobile communications device into Chinese society that the authorities have been puzzling for ages over the best way to channel investment for the future.

The thought of leaving it to a free market was ruled out. Chinese regulators jealously guard the role of the state in directing industrial policy — and the key players remain majority state-owned.

The big three that emerged from the reshuffle were China Mobile — the world’s biggest phone company by market value, with 399m mobile subscribers — and its two rivals, China Telecom and China Unicom.

The government’s stated aim was to intervene in the interests of competition and to provide for the arrival of so-called third generation (3G) high-speed mobile services.

Fast internet access, games and multimedia content, from music videos to financial information, will all become available to Chinese users, promising a level of mobile-technology use to rank alongside Japan or South Korea.

Chinese market analysts instinctively saw the changes as a move to weaken China Mobile, which has profited from a 70% share of the market.

Wang Yiwen, general manager of Shanghai Deding Investments said, ‘I believe this restructuring will reduce monopolistic tendencies in the telecoms market. It means the government will introduce an asymmetrical regulatory system to help China Telecom and China Unicom to compete with China Mobile.’

The focus is now turning to the significant capital expenditure that all three companies are expected to need to launch new services.

A broader issue is that the Chinese authorities do not appear to have resolved their view of so-called “digital convergence” in which the flow of information and images to consumers may multiply the audience for news — both good and bad.

The government may soon discover that regulating the telecoms providers is a minor challenge compared with controlling the citizens who will ultimately use their services to communicate with each other. More on this by clicking HERE.
Source: Times Online

The long awaited restructuring of China’s telecom market is happening.

What is surprising — at least it came as a surprise to all commentators and apparently all the major players — was inter-network mandated roaming with a price set by the regulator.

Suffering from this plan is China Mobile which currently earns roughly 70% of the industries’ (fixed and mobile) profits.

The new blueprint is meant to level the playing field, advance China’s homegrown technology standards and intellectual property and cut down on the need to overbuild base stations.

The government appears to be under the impression that it can tell China’s 580 million mobile users what handset or network to spend their money on. As it stands for 80% of new subscribers, the natural choice is China Mobile, but that’s most likely due to its extensive network coverage and the wide availability of popular 2G GSM handsets.

All of this could perhaps change a bit if TD-SCDMA — which is 3G — was launched and operating licenses issued for it and other 3G technologies.

Analysys International, a Beijing-based tech research firm, estimates China will have 30 million 3G users by 2011. Around 17 million of them will be using TD-SCDMA — small in terms of the country’s mobile market as a whole but significant if the network is running in part on Chinese technology.

TDCMA is being trialed in 10 cities including Beijing and Shanghai. Updates from the trials are a closely guarded secret, but one analyst described TD-SCDMA’s performance as ‘not shining.’ And that seems to be the general impression.

David Wolf, president of media, tech and telecom consultancy Wolf Group Asia came up with a most believable explanation.

He said, ‘TD-SCDMA is a technical achievement that shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. But from a commercial standpoint, all it represents is that when 4G comes, China has a place at the table that it never would have had without TD-SCDMA. It makes China a player in 4G, but it won’t make it a player in 3G.’

Finally where does this leave iPhone which has not got a deal with China Mobile and a change seems unlikely. But the market wants the iPhone. There is already a very substantial gray market. China Mobile being unable to make a deal will not change that.
Sources: China Economic Review and Market Watch

China will issue three licenses for its third generation mobile phone technology (3G) following an industry reorganization.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Finance said in a joint statement: ‘Based on the current situation of the telecom industry, we encourage China Telecom to buy China Unicom’s code-division multiple access (CDMA) network and China Unicom to incorporate with China Netcom. We encourage China Telecom to combine the basic telecom services unit of China Satcom and China Mobile Communications Corp. (CMCC) to take control of China Tietong Telecommunications ‘

China Unicom has two mobile networks, the CDMA and the global system for mobile communications (GSM).

Almost immediately China Mobile announced its acquisition plan of China Railway Communication (China Railcom), which would become a wholly-owned subsidiary but maintain independent operation.

China Telecom, China Netcom, and China Tietong are fixed line providers, while China Satcom offers services including satellite, mobile communications and Internet services.

The statement noted: ‘Three 3G licenses would be issued to help create three competitive phone companies that have telecom resources nationwide, near equal strength and scale, and can offer both mobile and fixed-line services.’

China has promised to provide 3G services for the Olympic Games in August.

Wang Guoping, analyst from China Galaxy Securities, said the final restructuring plan will have a relatively negative impact on China Mobile while benefiting China Telecom and China Netcom.

He said, ‘After the restructuring, China mobile will have two competitors, both of which will have the advantage of combining their fixed-line business with a mobile business.’

Wang Yuquan, a senior consultant of research firm Frost & Sullivan China, said the restructure may not work as planned.

He said, ‘I don’t think the ongoing restructuring could help increase the competition in the market because the restructuring itself was planned by the government and the telecom operators have little say in the decision making.’

But note that one other competitor looms on the horizon: VoIP which stands for Voice over Net Protocol and is basically a way of making free, or free-ish call over the Internet. Full report in China Economic Review. Click HERE and scroll down to Lines of communication
Source: China Daily and China View

Dragon Lu, executive vice president of Internet value-added service provider Shenzhou Unicom is intent on building wireless networks using what he calls 4G technologies, to provide cheap VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services and broadband access, as well as carry various application including video telephony, mobile TV and location-based services.

He said, ‘Initially we plan to build wireless broadband networks in nine cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Changsha, Changde and Wuhan. We have a license to provide Internet access services in these cities. We are currently in talks with investors in the remaining cities and will apply for the licenses for those cities later.’

Two important points to bear in mind.

There is, as yet, no formal or accepted standard for 4G and it can effectively be what you want it to be.

Secondly, no one has yet demonstrated a successful business plan for making a profit from VoIP protocol although several attempts have been made.

The idea of having wide coverage with wireless broadband is a good and wonderful thing.

The writer is currently on a Virgin train going from Wales to London. It has power points so that I can keep the notebook charged and I have a 3G dongle (one shown in the illustration at the top although that is a model using a computer on the left. I am never that well-dressed) stuck in a USB port which gives me very fair access to the Internet pretty well anywhere there is good telephone coverage which is most places.

Note the profit plan is already in place because I am using the 3G network and I am paying for usage on a time basis and on the quantity I download and upload.

(I could chose to go WiFi on this train but the costs are much higher.)

Looking around I would say nearly 20% of the passengers are using notebooks and are hooked to the Internet.

So it works, it can make money, but there must be a plan in place right at the beginning.

Shenzhou Unicom began wireless broadband trials in Changde in February, and has a plan to set up wireless broadband coverage in the city’s center by October of this year. Lu expects to achieve citywide wireless broadband coverage in Changde in February of next year.

The planned budget for Changde city is RMB250 million ($35.8 million). And this is on the low side.

‘Because they are only trials, the manufacturers provide the equipment to us free of charge. We have set up six Wi-Fi ‘hot zones’ in Changde.

The hot zones are basically large Wi-Fi coverage areas consisting of Wi-Fi hotspots connected together. They are located in hospitals and government office areas. In the future, we would like hospitals and schools to build their own Wi-Fi networks, and link with our public Wi-Fi networks in communities and downtown areas.’

The company plans to begin wireless broadband network deployment in three additional cities, namely Changsha, Shenzhen and Dongguan, in August this year.

He said, ‘The ideal model is to use WiMAX to build the backbone network and integrate it with Wi-Fi cells. WiMAX provides wider coverage than Wi-Fi. However it is not yet a very mature technology. Wi-Fi and WiMAX actually provide much faster data transmission rates than 3G technologies such as WCDMA, CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA.’

True, but the 3G technologies are pretty much all at in place and it seems daft to duplicate it in order to get a small speed advantage.

The term 4G, an acronym for fourth-generation communications system, is used to describe the next step in wireless communications. There is no formal definition for 4G yet, however 4G is projected to be a fully IP-based integrated system that will be capable of providing between100 Megabits per second (Mbps) and 1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) speeds both indoors and outdoors.
Source: China Business News

It is a great pity that China did not get its 3G services sorted out properly before the Olympics. We can rejoice that at least some of it is on line and working and there will be a serious presence — perhaps but not a total coverage — for the Olumpics.

We are triumphantly told that China’s 3G (third generation telephony) system will expand service to 10 cities AFTER August’s Olympic Games.

Wan Gang, the nation’s minister of science and technology said, ‘TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access) will commence use in ten big cities after the Olympics.’ He did not provide details as to what cities or when or how large the coverage would be.

Last week, Samsung gave the Beijing Organizing Committee for the summer Olympics 15,000 TD-SCDMA handsets, allowing China to proclaim that it would offer 3G service, via China Mobile, during the Games.

However, it is important to note that TD-SCDMA does not support other 3G formats, so visitors with 3G phones from Japan, Korea and European countries will not be able to use their handsets in Beijing.

As China’s homegrown 3G technology, TD-SCDMA began its latest round of trials in April, in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang and Xiamen, with a total of 20,000 users. China Mobile, which is offering the service and operating the trial, did not say when it would be completed. Although trials of TD-SCDMA began in 2005, a commercial rollout will still not ready by August.

China has also not issued 3G licenses, although Chinese telecom regulators have hinted at impending licensing for at least two years. China Mobile seems a lock given its prominence in the testing process. China Mobile is both China’s and the world’s largest mobile operator.

It’s also just possible — but not something to bet on — that China could skip 3G altogether, having already held 4G trials in 2007.

Worth nothing that despite the confident remarks of Wan Gang his Ministry of Science and Technology does not oversee telecommunications. That falls to the newly-created Industry and Information Ministry, a successor to the previous Ministry of Information Industry.
Source: IT World

It is very difficult to write this without losing one’s temper and saying rude and hurtful things about the American IT industry.

The United States has warned China it risks ‘technological isolation’ for developing unique technical standards of its own that are shutting out foreign competition.

Having taken a tablet to calm myself down I can write that for thirty years I have seen American companies desperately developing unique technical standards of its own so that it could screw other countries for royalties.

No industry, none, has acted the role of robber baron which such consistency.

It has never quite forgiven Tim Berners-Lee and CERN for not copyrighting the Internet so that users could be screwed for money. The legal advice given to all innovation departments in the United States is copyright and we will work out whether it is operable later.

The new technology which has them so irate is TD-SCDMA which is a new 3G standard. and despite what the Americans say it has been offered to other countries and some have accepted it. At least they will not have to pay monstrous royalties to the United States.

Now, Under Secretary of Commerce Christopher Padilla, seen in our illustration says that despite widely accepted international standards, China has developed its own standards for mobile phones. And, he added with a lack of morality or, to be charitable, basic understanding, it has done this ‘amid a lack of transparency and due process.’

If Christopher Padilla said that with a straight face he is not a man with whom one would wish to play poker.

He went on. ‘These requirements certainly provide Chinese domestic companies an unfair advantage, but they also carry great risks for China.’

Taking the piece by piece. How is not having to pay daft royalties to American companies an unfair advantage? What law, what ethic, states that the world must always pay the United States danegeld in order to improve itself? And to imply a threat of ‘great risk for China’ is disgusting.

To demonstrate that great risk he said that in the 1980s Japan thought its market was large enough to justify unique technology standards that would eventually move the world in its direction, to the benefit of its companies.

‘It was wrong,’ he said.

In what specific instance was it wrong? I can think of three examples. In the case of the United States, given time I would come up with three thousand.

Christopher Padilla went on, ‘Now China runs the same risk of turning itself into a lonely island of technological isolation, cut off from the world by government-mandated, China-unique standards that are out of line with where the market-driven global economy is heading.’

Such nonsense.

Christopher Padilla said many American companies have expressed concern about security standards for information technology products that made it costly for them to enter the Chinese market.

He said it appeared that Beijing favored a China-specific third-generation (3G) mobile phone standard over internationally recognized standards.

‘While China’s approach may appear to provide a competitive advantage in the short term, it in fact inhibits collaboration, limits product development, reduces consumer choice, and hinders China’s competitiveness and growth.’

Politicians learn to speak this way in the cradle. Note he does not mention a royalty has to be paid on every mobile phone made and sold in China which does not use the new TD-SCDMA China standards. He probably cut that bit out. It would have made his speech too long.
Source: AFP

The Ministry of Industry and Information said China witnessed a significant slowdown in mobile phone production in the first quarter of this year, as a result of the ongoing upgrading of product.

Between January and March, 141.29 million mobile phones were produced, a growth of 6.7% on the same period of last year. But the growth rate was 27.8 percentage points lower than the year-earlier level.

Motorola, a major producer which has operations in northern and eastern China, was said to be largely responsible for the the production decline in Tianjinand in Zhejiang, an eastern province.

Tianjin recorded RMB19.8 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in revenues on mobile phone production in the first three months, down RMB5.2 billion yuan, or 20.8%. Zhejiang’s revenue on mobile phone manufacturing was RMB7.46 billion, down RMB6.4 billion, or 46.2 percent.

In 2007, China produced 548 million mobile phones. This is now a nation with more than 500 million mobile phone users. But and this is important, they are almost all G2 standard users. With the release of the home-grown G3 — TD-SCDMA — this is biggest market in the world for new, improved, and slightly more profitale, mobiles.

Nothing much will happen until the middle of the year and then you can expect to see the figures zoom.

There is no information as to whether our model is holding one of the new mobiles. And, frankly, it does not matter.
Source: China Daily