China wants to brings its home grown 3G standard outside of the country and has set a target to take 20% of the overseas 3G subscriber market by 2020. This is according to plans which were revealed in a long-term development plan for mobile communication, drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
The news comes just days after two Taiwanese networks, Chunghwa Telecom and Far EasTone, expressed an interest in testing the TD-SCDMA standard on their networks.
Li Shihe, an advisor to major TD-SCDMA developer, Datang Mobile, said that MIIT also wants TD-SCDMA to gain more than 50% share of the domestic 3G market, meaning that they are relying on the largest operator in the country which uses this technology – China Mobile.
He also noted that in order for TD-SCDMA to expand globally, they’ll have to push the technology to the emerging markets, as Europe and the Americas are too far down the route with WCDMA and CDMA networks. In that sense, Mr. Shine expects that Chinese banks provide financial support to vendors selling TD-SCDMA infrastructure and handsets to overseas networks.
There’s no doubt China is a powerful country, but I’m not sure how this will fly considering that the West is going LTE. We’ll certainly watch carefully…
[Via: CellularNews]