China's homegrown 3G wireless standard goes for the gold

摘要

Just in time for the world stage of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, China's own 3G standard-time-division synchronous code-division multiple access, or TD-SCDMA-is at the starting gate. Trial network evaluations throughout 2007 have culminated in a Beijing-centric commercial rollout. TD-SCDMA represents China's efforts to reduce dependence on Western technology for next-generation cellular communications, although in fact that effort can be claimed only partially successful in the Hisense T68 Mobile Phone deconstructed here. By developing TD-SCDMA, China hopes to bypass much of the royalty stream associated with wideband-CDMA, the more broadly deployed global 3G protocol.