China could leapfrog 3G and push its own 4G agenda

• Posted: Monday, December 04, 2006
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: 3G Handset

Operators in many countries where 3G licenses have not yet been allocated are considering alternatives to UMTS or CDMA EV-DO, eyeing the possibility of leapfrogging other nations in moving directly to '4G-class' networks promising lower cost of ownership and better support for high value applications than 3G does. Brazil and India have both been notable in this discussion, but now China has entered the debate, with respected bodies calling for 3G to be, in effect, bypassed.

Last week Willie Lu, chairman of China's Fourth Generation Mobile Forum (4GMF), said that 3G would not be successful in China and that the world's largest mobile market should adopt an open IP, next generation wireless architecture straight away rather than proceed with a 3G licensing and build-out strategy that has been plagued by delays, politics and the attempts of the authorities to pressurize operators to adopt the homegrown 3G variant, TD-SCDMA, in preference to more proven but western-controlled networks.

Although two or three 3G licenses are likely, after many postponements, to be awarded in the first quarter of next year - one probably mandated for TD-SCDMA, the others neutral - Lu believes this will not be enough to enable the telecoms transformation that will be critical to China's ongoing economic regeneration, even with the promised break-up of the giant fixed and mobile incumbents.

"Based on the China specific situation, history, culture and development unbalance, 3G will not be successful," he said, claiming an "open wireless architecture is the only solution to move China forward to the next level of success in this industry so that the future mobile phone, like the computer, can be DIY - a 100% consumer product".

According to Lu, China believes that 3G does not fundamentally improve the 2G architecture and therefore should be seen as a transitional solution, while the country looks beyond it to new networks, which could include WiMAX or LTE, but which the government might prefer to rely on home-developed new technologies. Already, China is advanced in creating its own systems for mobile TV and broadband wireless, based on its own implementations of key systems like OFDM. Lu says the country's plan is to construct "an open architecture-based broadband wireless communication system" on the same lines as the open network architecture of the internet, or the open computer architecture of the PC.

Such an approach would chime in very closely with the views of the PC/IP giants like Intel as they seek to assert their agenda in the once closed mobile world. Whether they can persuade the Chinese to pay for their technologies rather than produce new competitors will depend whether these common interests bear commercial fruit in 4G.

Lu predicts that China's initial 4G networks will be deployed in early 2012, while the 4GMF will present its 4G standardization strategy at the ITU Telecom World 2006 conference in Hong Kong in December.

Source: WimaxTrends

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