TD-SCDMA - Deployment and Usage

Deployment and Usage

On January 20, 2006, Ministry of Information Industry of the People's Republic of China formally announced that TD-SCDMA is the country's standard of 3G mobile telecommunication. On February 15, 2006, a timeline for deployment of the network in China was announced, stating pre-commercial trials would take place starting after completion of a number of test networks in select cities. These trials ran from March to October, 2006, but the results were apparently unsatisfactory. In early 2007, the Chinese government instructed the dominant cellular carrier, China Mobile, to build commercial trial networks in eight cities, and the two fixed-line carriers, China Telecom and China Netcom, to build one each in two other cities. Construction of these trial networks was scheduled to finish during the fourth quarter of 2007, but delays meant that construction was not complete until early 2008.

The standard has been adopted by 3GPP since Rel-4, known as "UTRA TDD 1.28Mcps Option".

On March 28, 2008, China Mobile Group announced TD-SCDMA "commercial trials" for 60,000 test users in eight cities from April 1, 2008. Networks using other 3G standards (WCDMA and CDMA2000 EV/DO) had still not been launched in China, as these were delayed until TD-SCDMA was ready for commercial launch.

In January 2009 the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in China took the unusual step of assigning licences for 3 different third-generation mobile phone standards to three carriers in a long-awaited step that is expected to prompt $41 billion in spending on new equipment. The Chinese-developed standard, TD-SCDMA, was assigned to China Mobile, the world's biggest phone carrier by subscribers. That appeared to be an effort to make sure the new system has the financial and technical backing to succeed. Licences for two existing 3G standards, W-CDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, were assigned to China Unicom and China Telecom, respectively. Third-generation, or 3G, technology supports Web surfing, wireless video and other services and the start of service is expected to spur new revenue growth.