TD-SCDMA Update
April 20, 2007
- According to China Business News, China Telecom and China Netcom have initiated tenders for TD-SCDMA network equipment procurement. The two companies' new tenders were designed to meet the demand for their respective capacity expansion projects in Baoding and Qingdao, with more than 100 base stations to be added in each city. China Telecom's expansion project in Baoding is valuated at 820 million RMB (US$106.3 million; US$1 = 7.7 RMB), and it is expected that China Telecom's existing equipment supplier TD Tech and Datang Mobile will win the bid. China Netcom's Qingdao project is expected to cost 800 million RMB (US$103.7 million), with its current equipment suppliers Datang Mobile and ZTE Communications to be the potential bid winners. The share of each supplier in the overall deal still awaits negotiation though. Both projects are slated for completion in October 2007, in the same timetable as China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network expansion in eight other Chinese cities.
- China Mobile has kicked off the second-round equipment bidding for its TD-SCDMA trial network expansion. The new bidding involves subsystems of the network, including antennas, amplifiers, and repeaters, as opposed to the core network equipment called for in the first-round bidding. The overall scale of the bidding is estimated at over 3 billion RMB (US$388.8 million). Local indoor distribution system manufacturers such as Comba Telecom System, GrenTech, and Wuhan Hongxin Telecommunication Technologies have already submitted their tenders, according to the Xinhua News Agency.