China's 3G Soft Launch planned for Beijing Olympics

3G in China hits the Olympic Track

According to Xinhua, China's government news service, third-generation (3G) mobile phone service will be available for use at August's Beijing Olympics as the high-speed wireless connection service and related products were presented as SWAG to Olympic VIPS on Monday.

China Mobile and South Korean mobile phone producer Samsung presented 15,000 3G handsets, plus data cards and nearly 3 million yuan (US$ 428,600 ) of calling fees to the VICs (Very Important Chinese) of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing on Monday.

With the limited base of staff and volunteers for the Games who can utilize high-speed data transmissions, allowing them to view mobile televised games, play videos, and surf the Internet on cell phones, it signals the Chinese government's intent and interest to issue licenses and finally enter the foray of 3G mobility. CMCC's technology is the Chinese 3G standard, known as TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), and has been conducting limited trials of 3G service in China.

China Mobile has building out their TD-SCDMA network in eight cities, five of which are to host events for the Beijing Olympics in August, including Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, advised company insiders.  China Mobile is the sole Olympics partner/sponsor for the Beijing Olympics for mobile communications services while Samsung is the only sponsor for mobile terminal supply.

The beginning of the beginning of the 3G wars

With the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) having recognized TD-SCDMA as one of the world's three official 3G standards in 2000 it is inevitable that the next mobile technology wars will be started soon. The other two are Europe's WCDMA and North America's CDMA 2000. With close to 600 million mobile users in the Chinese domestic market, close to twice the US population, as well as the twice the population of the EU, where do you think this market battle will be settled--out of the US, Europe or China?